The Heights 10/24/11 by The Heights

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A look inside Into The Woods, the theater’s 30th anniversary production, B1

Tuition is only one expense among many for college students, D1

BC escapes Northeastern with a 4-3 overtime win, C1

Monday, October 24, 2011

Vol. XCII, No. 37

Ice Jam 2011 planned for Thursday Jam kicks off hockey and basketball By DJ Adams Heights Editor

After last year’s highly successful inaugural event, this Thursday, Oct. 27, Ice Jam will return to Conte Forum, hoping to continue the tradition of a free half-ice, halfhardwood pep rally for students and fans meant to build buzz for Boston College’s hockey and basketball programs. The structure of the program will remain similar to the 2010 format, which generally consisted of creative segments designed by the UGBC and the athletic department to then be subsequently performed by the members of each featured athletic team, as well as notable celebrities like former Eagle quarterback Doug Flutie, emcee Bob Costas, and performing artist Vanilla Ice. James Di Loreto, associate athletic director of external operations, said that this year Ice Jam will contain additional opportunities for students to interact with the athletes and celebrities present through several contests and giveaways. Some of the more striking promotions include 1,500 free T-shirts, a QR code contest in the days leading up to Thursday that will dole out luxury suite tickets to winners for the BU hockey and Duke basketball home games, a $1,000 award to the student donning the best costume in honor of Halloween weekend, and even a half-ice shot that one student selected randomly will have the chance to make for a $50,000 cash prize, an amount marketed as essentially equal to one year of BC tuition. “Overall, we received very positive feedback on the content from last year’s event but definitely tweaked some parts of the program for this year,” Di Loreto said

See Ice Jam, A4

Super Mash Bros. sell out the plex Plexapalooza draws crowd of 1,300, fills Fall Concert void for eager student body By Taylour Kumpf News Editor

On Friday, Oct. 21, the UGBC hosted Plexapalooza featuring Super Mash Bros., 5&A Dime, and Boston College’s own ILO Productions. According to John King, director of public safety, a total of 10 patients were assessed for apparent intoxication. “Six were transported to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, two were transported to the infirmary, and two were released to a sober adult party after an evaluation period,” King said. “There was one assault reported, which is being investigated by the BCPD.” Mike Zarrilli, executive director of campus entertainment for UGBC and CSOM ’12, said, “Relative to the numbers that we usually see in Conte, the Plex show numbers are low. If you use historical numbers from the past few concerts, 1,300 students in Conte would translate to a little over double the amount of transports that we had at Plexapalooza. I think this can largely be attributed to the setup of the event, as there is more open space and walking

See Super Mash Bros., A4

kevin hou / heights editor

Around 1,300 students filled the Plex on Friday night for Plexapalooza featuring Super Mash Bros (above). The event saw six student transports, but was a success, said organizers.

No rest for retirement research center Center focuses on issues surrounding retirement during current recession By Daniel Tonkovich Heights Editor

With the recent financial crisis, there has been a resurgence of attention paid by individuals to their level of preparedness to enter their retirement years. Questions have again surfaced regarding the

appropriate investment vehicles to utilize in order to achieve retirement goals and maintain the high quality of life American workers have come to expect after their years on a corporate payroll have ended. However, it did not take the trouble in the financial markets for Boston College, under the lead of Alicia Munnell, profes-

sor of management sciences, to establish a research center devoted exclusively to the issues surrounding retirement: the Center for Retirement Research. Established in 1998, a decade before the recession and its fallout, the Center is operating in its 13th year. The mission of the Center remains intentionally broad, said Munnell, who continues to serve as the Center’s director: “to promote research on retirement issues and transmit

See Retirement, A5

BC ranks No. 37 on expensive college list photo courtesy of the Theatre Department

The cast of ‘Into the Woods’ (above) will help open the 30th anniversary season for Robsham.

Robsham Theater celebrates anniversary of 30th season By Devon Sanford For The Heights

This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the Robsham Theater Arts Center. Robsham will be opening its doors Wednesday evening for the opening night of James Lapine and Stephen Sondheim’s Into the Woods. The show, directed by guest artist Paul Daigneault, tells the story of what happens to fairy tale characters after the happilyever-after ending. According to a recent release, a reception will be held to launch the 30th anniversary season and to honor its long-serving director, Howard Enoch on Thursday evening. On Sunday, the final night of Into the Woods, there will be a pre-show commemoration to honor the

30th anniversary. Robsham Theater first opened its doors on Oct. 30, 1981, when Rev. J. Donald Monan S.J., then-president of Boston College, dedicated the building before the first production of Camelot. “This year, the musical is being presented in the fall as a celebration for the 30th anniversary,” said Sheppard Barnett, associate director of Robsham Theater Arts Center. “Into the Woods is a fun show that people love to see.” Two years after the opening of BC, theater began under the dramatic society in 1865. “The dramatic society is the oldest continuing club at BC,” Barnett said. “Originally, it was the only producing organization. Slowly, there became a the-

See Robsham, A4

By David O’Donaghue For The Heights

Campus Grotto, a national college news publication recently released its rankings of the most expensive colleges in the country. Boston College came in as the 37th most expensive school with a total cost of $54,528 for the 2011-2012 academic year. This year’s total cost at BC is up just under $3,000 from the 2010-2011 academic year. BC also dropped four spots in the rankings of most expensive schools from 33rd to 37th. The top three most expensive schools are Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, and Columbia University, respectively. Sarah Lawrence’s total costs for this year are just under $60,000 at $59,170. This is Sarah Lawrence’s fourth year in a row atop the rankings. Despite being 37th in overall cost, BC came in at 48th in the rankings for tuition with a cost of $41,4180. Fees are not a major factor in the overall cost, demonstrating BC may have fairly high room and board fees. The article explains that, “while the

names on this list haven’t changed much over the years, the numbers sure have. When we first started ranking colleges by cost back in 2007, only one school [George Washington University] had a total cost of over $50,000, now 111 schools do.” Consequently, despite the increasing need for a college degree, it

seems to be increasingly more difficult to pay for. BC students and administration do not seem overly upset or concerned with the ranking, and for good reasons. Not only did BC drop four spots in the

See Tuition, A5

mollie kolosky / heights editor

TopTHREE

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

things to do on campus this week

Meal options workshop Tuesday Time: 12 p.m. Location: McElroy 141

Come learn about the best food options that Boston College Dining has to offer in a workshop featuring Sheila Tucker, the executive dietician at BC. The workshop is presented as a part of Love Your Body Week and is sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center.

Former D.C. Mayor, Adrian Fenty lecture

Wednesday Time: 4:30 p.m. Location: Gasson 100

Listen to Adrian Fenty, former mayor of D.C., in a lecture presented by the Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics in Gasson 100.

Performance of Into the Woods

Wednesday Time: 7:30 p.m. Location: Robsham Theater

Enjoy a performance of Into the Woods, directed by Paul Daigneault, BC ’87. Tickets are $10 with a BC ID.

the

University

In s w e N

Proposed merger of U. Maryland campuses meets opposition

On Campus World music concert to benefit St. Columbkille Partnership School St. Columbkille Church in Brighton will play host to a world music concert to benefit St. Columbkille Partnership School, which is a collaboration between Boston College, St. Columbkille parish, and the Archdiocese of Boston. Headline performances at the concert, which will take place on Oct. 27 beginning at 7 p.m., will be Brazilian classical guitarist Rogerio Dentello and Celtic harpist Maeve Gilchrist. Also performing will be fourth grade St. Columbkille student and pianist, Libby Wu, who was one of three St. Columbkille students to perform at the BC Idol event at BC earlier this year, and violinist Michael James who is a fellow at BC’s Roche Center for Catholic Education. Tickets to the concert, which will be sold at the door, will be on sale for $10, but are free for children 12 and under. A reception will follow the event.

Local News Four-story apartment proposed on Allston-Brookline border A Boston developer, the Mount Vernon Company, has proposed the construction of a four-story apartment building on the border of Allston and Brookline, The Boston Globe reported on Oct. 14. The 79-unit complex, which would take the place of a 47,000 square foot warehouse currently on the site, would require approximately 145 construction workers and be completed by the summer of 2013. The warehouse sits across the street from an $23 million project by the same developer.

By Samantha Costanzo For The Heights

daniel lee / heights staff

Eric Greitens (above) speaks about his military and philanthropic service as a part of the Chambers Lecture Series. respectively, in 2007. The Mission Continues matches former military members with what Greitens calls “service fellowships” that help them “become citizen leaders and reconnect with their purpose.” “They needed someone to believe in them enough to challenge them,” Greitens said. “It’s difficult, but not complicated.” He illustrated this through the story of Anthony Smith, a service member who suffered intense

injuries to his right side, including the loss of his hand, and had to be put in a medically induced coma for 62 days. Thanks to The Mission Continues, however, Smith is now a martial arts teacher for children. Other notable fellowships given to injured service men and women included becoming tennis and ski instructors, training to become nurses, and working with physically handicapped children. Many of these new citizen leaders are

often handicapped themselves, making their ability to serve again even more remarkable. During his talk, Greitens described what he called “the hardest moment, of the hardest week, of the hardest military training in the world,” at the SEAL training school. Greitins spoke about the end of the second grueling day, and every SEAL in training lined up on the beach to watch the sun set as their commanders yelled into bullhorns and tried to “get inside [their] heads,” Greitens said. “I saw more people quit that night than any other time, when they thought about how hard it was going to be.” Greitens said, however, that “there is no way to transform who I am in one minute, one day, or one week. To transform, you need the courage of perseverance: the willingness to do the hard thing that has to be done to rebuild my family, transform myself, and to be of service. Amazing transformations in us lead to hope in others.” At the end of his talk, Greitens was met with a standing ovation. He is the author of The Heart and the Fist: The Education of a Humanitarian, the Making of a Navy SEAL, which tells his story and explains his ideas of combining strong leadership with love and service. n

Police Blotter

Voices from the Dustbowl

10/18/11-10/21/11

“What was your favorite Halloween costume as a kid?”

Tuesday, Oct. 18 9:17 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a student who had been struck by a motor vehicle while he was riding a bicycle off campus. The student was evaluated at the primary care facility, and was later transported to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Boston Police responded and will be investigating. 11:35 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a party who was choking on a food item in Lyons Hall. A bystander performed the Heimlich maneuver and the item was dislodged. The party was transported to the Boston College primary care facility to be evaluated.

Wednesday, Oct. 19 11:44 a.m. - A report was filed regarding a BCPD officer providing assistance to the Boston Police at the scene of a motor vehicle accident on Beacon Street that involved three vehicles. The Boston Fire Department and EMS also responded. There were no reported injuries. 2:34 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a BCPD officer who observed an accident involving two motor vehicles on Foster Street while on patrol. There were no reported injuries. The Boston Police were notified. 5:03 p.m. - A report was filed regarding assistance provided to BC student hav-

ing an allergic reaction. The party was transported to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital by Armstrong Ambulance.

Thursday, Oct. 20

“Barney.” —Michael Masse, A&S ’13

4:36 p.m. - A report was filed regarding a request for assistance by the Lynn Police who had confiscated several stolen items, includig a 1970 BC class ring. The owner was identified and the Lynn detective handling the investigation was advised of the findings.

Friday, Oct. 21 12:08 a.m. - A report was filed regarding an odor of marijuana coming from a room in Vanderslice Hall reported by the RAs. Two students were identified and a small amount of contraband was confiscated. The matter was referred to ODSD for follow up.

“Hercules.” —Chris Byrnes, CSOM ’15

2:08 a.m. - A report was filed regarding assistance provided by the Boston Police to a student who was assaulted and injured off campus. The student was transported to Beth Israel Hospital by Boston EMS. 3:12 a.m. - A report was filed regarding two students who were observed by cleaning staff carrying a large banquetstyle table across middle campus. A follow up was conducted.

—Source: The Boston College Police Department

65° Partly Cloudy

61° Mostly Sunny 43°

wednesday

62° Few Showers 51°

“Princess Jasmine.” —Jamie Liptack,

56° Showers 43°

Source: National Weather Service

A Guide to Your Newspaper The Heights Boston College – McElroy 113 140 Commonwealth Ave. Chestnut Hill, Mass. 02467 Editor-in-Chief (617) 552-2223 Editorial General (617) 552-2221 Managing Editor (617) 552-4286 News Desk (617) 552-0172 Sports Desk (617) 552-0189 Marketplace Desk (617) 552-3548 Features Desk (617) 552-3548 Arts Desk (617) 552-0515 Photo (617) 552-1022 Fax (617) 552-4823 Business and Operations General Manager (617) 552-0169 Advertising (617) 552-2220 Business and Circulation (617) 552-0547 Classifieds and Collections (617) 552-0364 Fax (617) 552-1753 EDITORIAL RESOURCES News Tips Have a news tip or a good idea for a story? Call Taylour Kumpf, News Editor, at (617) 552-0172, or e-mail news@bcheights.com. For future events, e-mail, fax, or mail a detailed description of the event and contact information to the News Desk. Sports Scores Want to report the results of a game? Call Paul Sulzer, Sports Editor, at (617) 552-0189, or e-mail sports@bcheights.com. Arts Events The Heights covers a multitude of events both on and off campus – including concerts, movies, theatrical performances, and more. Call Darren Ranck, Arts and Review Editor, at (617) 552-0515, or e-mail arts@ bcheights.com. For future events, e-mail, fax, or mail a detailed description of the event and contact information to the Arts Desk. Clarifications / Corrections The Heights strives to provide its readers with complete, accurate, and balanced information. If you believe we have made a reporting error, have information that requires a clarification or correction, or questions about The Heights standards and practices, you may contact Michael Caprio, Editor-in-Chief, at (617) 552-2223, or e-mail editor@ bcheights.com. CUSTOMER SERVICE Delivery To have The Heights delivered to your home each week or to report distribution problems on campus, contact Dan Ottaunick, General Manager at (617) 552-0547. Advertising The Heights is one of the most effective ways to reach the BC community. To submit a classified, display, or online advertisement, call our advertising office at (617) 552-2220 Monday through Friday.

A&S ’15

Tuesday

thursday

Former Navy SEAL speaks of humanitarian efforts

he found that the one thing many injured service members wanted to do was return to their units. Greitens realized that though their injuries would make this impossible for most of them, there were still ways for them to serve their communities. “It’s not a charity, it’s a challenge,” Greitens said of The Mission Continues, an organization he and two friends started with their combat pay and disability checks,

Today

47°

The Baltimore Sun reported that the proposed merger of the University of Maryland College Park campus and the Baltimore campus is being strongly opposed by the leaders of the Baltimore school as well as the city. While the president of the state Senate feels that the merger will help bring prestige to both institutions, the University System of Maryland, of which both schools are a part, will still hold hearings on the issue and will submit a report to the General Assembly in December.

featured story

Eric Greitens is many things: a former Navy SEAL, a photographer, a Gold Glove boxer, a Rhodes scholar, an author, and a humanitarian. Now, he can add Chambers Lecture Series speaker to that list. Greitens spoke to a group of Boston College faculty and students, including ROTC members and Carroll School of Management (CSOM) students, in the Yawkey Center’s Murray Function Room last Thursday. The lecture series, organized by CSOM’s Winston Center for Leadership and Ethics, invites one speaker each year who “offers perspectives and guidance … to shape ethical leaders of the future,” according to its web page. Greitens offered that and more in his talk. Though his naval career included tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is Greitens’ philanthropic efforts that proved most inspiring to the audience. He talked about his experiences in Bosnian and Rwandan refugee camps and how here he saw many of the refugees “find a way to be of service and step outside [their] own pain.” Later, after he completed his military service, he said

Four Day Weather Forecast

CORRECTIONS Please send corrections to editor@bcheights.com with ‘correction’ in the subject line.

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Don’t forget to respect

Consider

This...

COLLEGE COSTS:

Joseph Pasquinelli Students had a busy Monday through Friday two weeks ago with classes and midterms. It also seems that they had a busy weekend. There were many reported incidents of underage intoxication, parties being broken up, and other foolish behavior including assaulting resident assistants, Eagle EMS, and other authority figures. This past weekend, though, there was not nearly as much debauchery on the part of students. Why would the behavior of students in general be so drastically different from one weekend to the next? The mistakes of students two weekends ago may be correlated to the stress that comes with midterms. Students seem to be living by the motto, “Work hard, play harder.” There is nothing wrong with letting off a bit of steam, but we need to be respectful when we are out on the weekends. The behavior that students were engaged in is inappropriate and disrespectful. The authority figures who were disrespected in some of the worst ways possible two weeks ago may be interfering with the “play” of students, but that type of rudeness is not the proper response. It is dangerous, and may point to more deeply rooted problems in our culture. Drinking is understandable and acceptable when done responsibly, but attacking a person who is present to help students does not fall into the category of good, clean fun. When a student responds the way some students did, it reflects poorly on the entire student body of Boston College. What does it say about us when we behave in such a matter? This goes beyond a basic problem with authority. Many students are at BC because they respected authority, and in turn earned the respect of those in positions of authority. Why is there this sudden and brief shift in the attitudes of students? It may be due in part to the stress of midterms. Students may feel authority figures have “imposed” in some way on their time and well-being. Students cannot, however, lash out at their professors because they have a direct and very visible effect on students’ futures. Thus, they displace their frustration on authority figures who students may not understand have a direct effect on their futures. What students do need to realize, though, is that an arrest record is even more detrimental to their futures than a D on a midterm exam. At an even deeper level than simply grades, student behavior and responses to authority figures become habit, and habit becomes character. While students will hopefully not acquire a police record during their time as undergraduates, it is likely that such disrespectful behavior will continue after they graduate. When we enter the working world, we will likely encounter situations much more stressful than a midterm exam. If we go out drinking and assault a police officer or other authority figure, it will not be brushed off as stupid college behavior; this would result in an arrest record that could seriously interfere with future work opportunities. As we continue on our journey toward becoming men and women for others, work hard and play hard, but do not behave in a way that reflects poorly on all of us and could lead to destructive behavior in the future.

Joseph Pasquinelli is a staff columnist for The Heights. He welcomes comments at editor@bcheights.com

photo courtesy of the greater boston food bank

Meredith Winter (center), LSOE ’15, received the Nally Award from the Greater Boston Food Bank, on Oct. 14.

Freshman honored at Greater Boston Food Bank luncheon By Molly LaPoint Asst. News Editor

The Greater Boston Food Bank honored a select group of supporters that are performing extraordinary work in hunger relief throughout eastern Massachusetts on Oct. 14 at the annual Partner Appreciation Luncheon at the Westin Copley Hotel. Meredith Winter, LSOE ’15, was among the recipients of this honor. Winter received the Nally Award, which recognizes young people doing work in hunger relief. Other recipients included Citizen’s Bank, The Open Door Food Pantr y in Gloucester, Senator Jack Hart, Representative Peter Kocot, and the

Stop and Shop Supermarket Company. “We are committed to pro-

The partners we honored today show a deep generosity of spirit and true compassion for people who are hurting. —Catherine D’Amato, President and CEO of the Greater Boston Food Bank viding enough food so that every person in need in eastern

Massachusetts has at least one meal a day,” said Catherine D’Amato, GBFB’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Fulfilling a challenging goal like that requires the help of many dedicated people and organizations. The partners we honored today show a deep generosity of spirit and true compassion for people who are hurting. They help us take some of the hurt away. They help our efforts to end hunger here.” The GBFB is the largest hunger relief organization in New England and among the largest food bank in the country. It distributes more than 36.7 million pounds of food to 550 member agencies and 30 direct service programs and provides meals for 545,000 people a year. n

It did not come as a shock to many that Boston College was ranked No. 37 in Campus Grotto’s list of most expensive schools, and it came as even less of a shock that we came out on top against Boston University on yet another list. Our $54,528 a year, as calculated on Campus Grotto’s list, earned us a spot above universities like Georgetown, George Washington University, Boston University, MIT, and Tufts. CBS News ranked BC the most expensive school in Massachusetts last year, though we were unseated on their list this year by Williams College with a difference of $32. Bloomberg ranked BC No. 9 of the most expensive colleges in a list of 50, and BC also ranked No. 33 on TalksTech, and No. 46 on DMVfollowers.com, though the actual dollar amount is calculated differently on each of those lists. Though the rankings and calculated dollar amounts may vary, the length of the lists does produce one common conclusion: we aren’t the only students feeling the pain. According to CNBC, who deemed the new rankings as evidence of a college debt crisis, Americans now owe more on their students loans than their personal credit cards. In response to this finding, originally produced by FinAid.org, the site produced its own Student Loan Debt Clock, which estimates the current amount of outstanding student loan debt, including federal and private student loans. The current amount of outstanding student loan debt is more than $951,305,000,000, which increases at a rate similar to that of the nation’s deficit clock and other such large-scale debt clocks. According to the website that created the Student Loan

Debt Clock, America’s debt for student loans grows at a constant rate of $2,853.88 per second, which means that the total value will surpass $1 trillion next year. Compared to the rate of inflation in the United States, the cost of a college education increases two to three times higher, as reported by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. This means that the cost for a college degree is rising faster than medical care costs. The difference between mortgages and other debts and student loans is that student loans cannot be settled through refinancing, foreclosure, or declaring bankruptcy. By law, bankruptcy cannot cover student loans, and restructuring student loans has very limited options. Failure to pay student loans can result in the garnishment of wages, seizures of social security payments and tax refunds by the government, and even revocation of professional licenses. The U.S. Department of Education recently reported that student loan defaults have doubled since 2005, and some instances of drastic measures being taken to dodge student loan payment have included stories of people fleeing the country. However, responses to the college debt crisis have also increased. BC’s need-blind acceptance policy has resulted in the increase of financial aid, because students’ financial information is not considered in the admissions process. On a national scale, the government has launched several programs to help prevent defaults on student loans, including an income-based repayment program, which lets borrowers make monthly payments that are calculated by a percentage of their total income. -Anna Patrick n

WRC’s Love Your Body Week to kick off this week By Meghan Gibbons For The Heights

You hear it all around campus: “I can’t believe I just ate that,” Or, “I need to get to the Plex today,” or, “I look so out of place.” Love Your Body week, which takes place this week, strives to stop those negative thoughts and focus on promoting a positive body image that will echo throughout one’s entire Boston College experience. For this week, the Women’s Resource Center (WRC) hosts a variety of programs with the goal of educating students about what an eating disorder looks like, eating and exercise habits, and body image issues. Regardless of race, gender, or class, Love Your Body Week offers programs that offer students the tools to recognize healthy relationships with their bodies. The week starts off tonight at 5 p.m. on the first floor of O’Neill Library with an exhibition titled “Maskulinity.” A unique viewpoint of the male experience of Love Your Body week is portrayed through photography, paint, charcoal, and mixed media. The student exhibition focuses on men’s bodies and addresses such issues as male selfimage, social expectations of men,

and what is considered ‘masculine.’ Featured speakers include Richard Hoyt, A&S ’12, and Troy Talkington, College Road resident director. Tricia Rose, a professor of African Studies at Brown University, will speak in McGuinn 121 on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. to discuss her book Hip Hop Wars and what it takes for women to love their bodies in the age of mass culture and hip hop, which tends to create troubling cultural images that influence one’s understanding of race, culture, body image, and sexuality. She will be available after the lecture for a book sale and signing. The documentary Miss Representation will be shown on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Higgins 300. The film exposes and challenges the limited and often disapproving image the media portrays of females, which makes it difficult for females to feel powerful and capable of achieving leadership positions. Professor Elizabeth Rhodes will lead a discussion from the department of romance languages and literature following the screening. On Thursday at 4:30 p.m. in the Ignacio basement study lounge, Zine Magubane, a professor in the sociology department will address the cause of such sentiments, their

source of promotion, and their psychological effects in an interactive discussion following features from the documentary Rise, Dark Girl, which explores the deep-seated biases associated with skin color. There will be a screening of the documentary HAZE and panel discussion about alcohol-related emergencies on campus on Thursday at 6 p.m. in Higgins 300. The program will focus on how to love your body and stay safe if you or a friend chooses to drink. There are several lunch programs throughout the week that offer a conversational opportunity for students to open up and hear from others about striving to live a happy and healthy life on campus. On Tuesday at 12 p.m. in the WRC an “Eat This Not That: BC Edition” will be hosted. Shelia Tucker, executive dietician, will host a workshop that shows the best options in our dining halls. On Wednesday at 12 p.m. in Lyons 316, “Loving Your Body after Trauma” will discuss the differences between eating disorders unrelated to trauma, and those developed in response to a traumatic experience, the challenges associated with identifying eating disorders, and how issues should be addressed. CEO of the Multiservice Eating Disorders Association, Beth Mayer will host the

Photo courtesy of the women’s resource center

interactive workshop. On Thursday at 12 p.m. in the WRC, “Disordered Eating: How to Help A Friend” will host speakers including: a BC senior who is recovering from anorexia, Christine Merkle, assistand director of University Counseling Services, Tucker, and Katie Dalton, director of the WRC, will discuss the signs and symptoms of eating disorders, how to reach out to a friend, and available resources on campus. The week concludes on Friday at 7 p.m. in Cushing 001, with a production of Eve Ensler’s play The

Good Body, which features student performances and directors on monologues about women and their bodies. All of these programs of Love Your Body Week offer students the opportunity to forget about the dark body images the media and society create, and turn to a bright future on how to live a flourishing life mentally, physically, and emotionally. For more details about Love Your Body Week or the support services at the WRC, stop by their office in McElroy 141. n

The Heights

Ice Jam rallies fans

Monday, October 24, 2011

Robsham Theater Arts presents ‘Into the Woods’

Ice Jam, from A1

Robsham, from A1

in an e-mail. “Our goal this year is greater fan interaction with the teams, which will provide an opportunity to get to know the student-athletes more. We have a number of contests where BC fans will have a chance to win some great prizes.” The athletic department partnered with Odds on Promotions for the $50,000 award, a marketing firm that focuses on allowing companies and institutions to offer upscale giveaways at an insured rate so as to protect BC in case the feat is completed successfully. The exact details of what the shot will require the chosen student to accomplish have yet to be announced. Rather than Costas returning as emcee for the rally, famous SportsCenter lead anchor Steve Levy will host Ice Jam this year, and the event promises to yet again feature a star-studded lineup of surprise appearances from past BC grads and beyond. Though just in its second year, Ice Jam is already being triumphed as an emerging, unique BC tradition due to the fact that not many schools possess the combination of competitive basketball and hockey programs both celebrated by the student body. “This is a perfect opportunity at the beginning of the season to connect the Superfans with the teams,” Di Loreto said. “I am hoping we can fill Conte Forum Thursday night at 7:30 p.m., as this is a really great chance to support all four teams at once with an event no other venue in the country has done. It is a great new tradition for BC.” n

ater component out of the communication department, and eventually, theatre became its own department.” In the early 1970s, a theater major was established in the College of Arts and Sciences as part of the department of speech, communication and theater. In 1993, the theater department was officially established. The theater production has come a long way since its establishment in 1865. “I’ve been here for 24 years,” Barnett said, “and from my experience … the professional and production values have increased over the years. The entire production process has changed a great deal. The students have changed. They are much more involved with shows in high school and more students are coming to BC with previous experience. That brings a whole new change to the theater. The professionalism of the students has really benefited the entire production.” In 1981, Robsham Theater opened as the center of theater production on campus. E. Paul Robsham Jr., an undergrad student of BC, died in a car accident in 1983, the summer following his freshman year. In 1985, the theater was dedicated in his honor. “His parents wanted to honor [their son’s] memory,” Barnett said. Robsham is now a Student Affairs-run program. “In the last 30 years, there have been 120 University theatre productions performed in Robsham … as well as many student activities every year,” Barnett said. When asked if he had a favorite show, Barnett said, “They’ve all been special … I think the most important thing is that, be-

ing a Student Affairs facility, our mission is the formation of the total student ... It’s not just getting on and doing the show. The process of doing a show helps people learn leadership skills, organizational skills, carpentry skills and managerial skills. There’s a whole spectrum of growth that happens throughout the theatrical process, and that

“My hope is someday to have a premier performance space, a grand hall.” —Sheppard Barnett, Associate Director of Robsham Theater Arts Center is really the most important thing we do.” As Barnett looks toward the future, he hopes to see even more change in the arts. “My hope is someday to have a premier performance space, a grand hall … something that could hold a grand music event, a large musical or something to tour in ... I think that the theatrical process benefits people in their future careers and future lives. In Student Affairs, we’re looking to help form the entire person. I think in some ways, the arts are undervalued in the University.… There’s a long and very full tradition of the arts in the Jesuit education system. I’d really like to see the performing arts follow the Jesuit tradition and become the educational tools that they can be.” n

photo courtesy of the Theatre Department

Theft down in September for Allston-Brighton By Daniel Tonkovich Heights Editor

Theft in Boston Police District 14, covering the Allston-Brighton neighborhood, was down this September compared to last year according to crime statistics from the Boston Police Department. Many Boston College students residing off campus live in District 14. Compared to the same period in 2010 from Aug. 30 to Oct. 2, robbery was down 50 percent, from 10 to five incidents. Burglary remained unchanged with 36 incidents during the period. Larceny was down 7 percent, from 111 to 103 incidents. Vehicle theft was down 44 percent, from nine to five incidents. All theft categories include actual and attempted. Even with the trend, officials urged continued vigilance. “Unfortunately, many crimes are crimes of opportunity, and universities in general, with their concentration of people, can provide many opportuni-

ties for unfortunate crimes to occur,” said BCPD Chief John King. “The best defense against theft is to secure valuables, whether that is not leaving them unattended in the library or locking the doors and windows of your home.” University police departments in the Boston area communicate when a spike in criminal or unusual activity occurs on or near campus, King said. However, the warning from other departments may come too late for the department to make necessary adjustments for prevention prior to the trend spreading to other institutions. BCPD provides frequent crime updates and prevention reminders to the BC community through its social networking sites. “Students should always be mindful to secure their residences both on and off campus to prevent theft. Simple measures such as locking doors, including sliding doors, and reporting suspicious activity can prevent many incidents of theft,” said Paul Chebator, interim dean of student development. n

kevin hou / heights editor

Plexapalooza well-received by student body Super Mash Bros., from A1 around in Conte.” “From the numbers of alcohol-related transports, it looks like Plexapalooza was right in line with previous Plex shows,” Zarrilli said. The low number of transports may be related to the hype surrounding the event. With the moratorium placed on large-scale concerts in Conte Forum, students were warned that their behavior at the Plex event could affect the overall future of these of types events on campus. Before Plexapalooza, Zarrilli was told by administrators with the Student Programs Office that “an unusually high number of transports at the Plex Show could significantly set [UGBC] back in getting the concert moratorium lifted,” and Zarrilli said that he hoped “students [would] take this into consideration and act responsibly both before and at the event.” Zarrilli was also one of four members of UGBC who signed an e-mail that was sent leading up to the Plex show. This e-mail, one of two sent to those students who purchased tickets to the event, reminded students that “A lot of alcoholrelated transports from [the] event could jeopardize all large-scale programming on campus.” “We love being able put on entertaining events and we hope that Plexapalooza is one of many this school year,” read the UGBC letter. The second e-mail was sent by the Student Programs Office (SPO) and included a list of resources and policies to assure that students were fully informed before they arrived at Plexapalooza. “We hope you are excited to be attending the Plexaplooza dance sponsored by UGBC in the Plex tonight,” the letter read. “All members of SPO want you to have a good time and to stay safe. We are writing in response to recent feedback at the State of the Heights, and ask that you take a moment to review the resources that are available to you.”

Like other on-campus events, the Plex show was staffed by members of BC’s Eagle EMS emergency medical technicians, with Armstrong ambulances, and crew standing by outside to transport patients. There was a medical tent set up outside of the Plex for the event, and “the St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center staff was notified prior to the event and was prepared to receive extra patients as well,” said Chris Faherty, president of Eagle EMS and A&S ’13. “[Eagle EMS’s] priority is to ensure anyone seeking or requiring medical attention receives the best and most appropriate emergency care possible,” he said. “I’m happy to say that we accomplished this seamlessly on Friday night at the event.” Zarrilli shared Faherty’s sentiment. “Overall, we think the event went pretty

well,” he said. “Everything ran smoothly and from the feedback that I’ve gotten from some students who attended, everyone seemed to have a great time.” King agreed. “Generally speaking, the concert planning went well and there was very good collaboration during the event among organizers, BCPD, Eagle EMS, Armstrong Ambulance, and Team Ops,” he said. “This helped to contribute to the success of the event.” Zarrilli said he does not yet know how the administration feels about the number of transports from the event. “I haven’t yet had the chance to debrief with administrators about the show, so I’m not certain about its implication on future events,” he said. “However, I personally don’t think that anything happened that would change the status of our large-scale programming.” n

kevin hou / heights editor

Super Mash Bros. shared their mash-ups with a crowd of 1,300 students on Friday in the Plex.

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Center for Retirement Research aims at preparing recession-era retirees Retirement, from A1 new findings to a broad audience.” Munnell has maintained the all-encompassing charge out of an understanding of the magnitude of the retirement-income debate – aware of its economic and social impact on the entire population, not exclusively retirees. She gained insight into the complexity of sustaining one’s standard of living in retirement prior to joining the faculty at BC, having served on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and as assistant secretary of the Treasury for economic policy under the Clinton administration. She also spent 20 years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston overseeing research. The work of the center comes during a critical period. According to Pew Research Center population projections, 26 percent of the total U.S. population are baby boomers, currently in, or soon to enter, retirement. By 2030, 18 percent of the nation will be at least 65 years of age and surveys show many soonto-be retirees are grossly under informed and unprepared for the financial burdens of retirement. “Preparation for retirement is a pressing issue,” Munnell said. “With the continuous elimination of pension programs by employers, there is an increasing reliance on Social Security and 401Ks to provide income during one’s retirement years. People must be prepared to maintain their desired quality of life in retirement from their retirement investments. It is a terrible thing to not have enough money in retirement as options close as you age. Many things from career transitions to moving cities become more complex as one grows older.” “People have not fully reflected on the changing landscape,” said Andrew Eschtruth, associate director of external relations for the center. “Employer pensions are increasingly rare. The risk and responsibility for retirement planning has been shifting for many years from employers to individuals for years. Accordingly, people must also adjust their expectations about life in retirement.” The general lack of understanding about the multiple factors related to financing retirement provides the center with an ever-growing list of research topics. “The center not only explores the benefits and challenges associated with traditional retirement income sources such as Social Security and 401Ks, but also investments such as one’s house, reverse mortgages, and healthcare costs such as long term care,” said Eschtruth. “The results are convincing. Many will have to work through their 60s. Doing so, not only provides income, but also health benefits associated with being active. Working longer gives your investments more time to grow and reduces the number of years one has to finance

their lifestyle from retirement income.” The center’s work goes beyond economics, seeking to understand the motivating behavior and impact of individual and institutional decisions in order to focus on researching practical solutions. For instance, public pensions in the U.S. face a shortfall of over $2 trillion. The staggering number has forced state and local governments to liquidate assets and make deep cuts to services, impacting the quality of life for all community members, not just retirees. “As the center progresses, we continue to be exposed to more challenges and issues in the retirement planning process,” Munnell said. “We look not only at the economic component, but the social components as well when it comes to decisions related to retirement income. We also explore the impact of decisions of state and local governments, such as state funded pension plans, and their impact on quality of life in communities when governments must fund the obligations.” Influencing the decision making process on matters related to retirement income is where the center excels and makes its impact. It does so not just through quality research, but also through effective communication with a diverse population. “We desire to get these issues into the public discourse,” Munnell said. “Our priority is to reach decision makers at all levels of retirement savings, from the individuals to the advisors to companies, governments, and pension plans. The quality of our academic research gains us respect from peers. If we constantly regurgitate information, then we lose our thought-leadership status.” The center reaches decision-makers at all levels of the retirement income industry by tailoring the communication of their findings to the various individuals involved in the retirement planning process. It produces documents from white paper for retirement policy experts to brief explanations of contemporary retirement issues for financial planners and individuals. Members of the center’s staff also frequently engage with major investment firms, insurance companies, and retirement advocacy organizations regarding their involvement in the retirement planning process. As a result of research excellence and direct engagement with retirement planners, the center has experienced considerable growth in its scale of operations. It has grown from two full-time employees in 1998 to 22 fulltime employees today. That number does not include numerous undergraduate and graduate students aiding the center as part-time research assistants. The quality and intelligibility of the center’s research has helped to establish it as one of the foremost authoritative sources on the retirement income debate, frequently cited in publications such as The New York

elise taylor / heights editor

The Center for Retirement Research helps people navigate the world of retirement opportunities during the current recession period. Times and The Wall Street Journal. The center is seeing positive change in retirement planning trends as a result of its 13 years of research. A rise in automatic 401K enrollment for employees at companies is just one example of positive changes the Center sees in the retirement income sustainability challenge. “Driving up participation rates in employer 401Ks is a step in the right direction when it comes to the many issues of income in retirement,” Eschtruth said. “401Ks have traditionally been opt-in programs. By making them opt-out, the participation rates, especially among young employees should rise.” Despite the center’s extensive communication of its findings, its challenge continues to be informing the population about the economic imperative of adequate planning for retirement. “Overall, financing retirement is about economic security,” Munnell said. “It is a tragedy to think of people arriving at retirement with inadequate resources. Drawing attention to the matter and implementing practical solutions can provide not only the retiree, but the nation, with stability and security.” n

BC ranks 37th on list of expensive colleges Tuition, from A1 rankings this year, it dropped 13 spots from 2009-2010 to the 2010-2011 years. When asked about this ranking and the overall cost of BC, University Spokesman Jack Dunn said, “Boston College works hard to limit tuition increases through careful assessment and planning, and by operating as efficiently as possible, while not sacrificing the academic programs, student services, and facilities that have helped to distinguish BC as one of the nation’s best universities.” BC may remain in the upper echelon of the country’s colleges

when it comes to cost, but the administration is doing what it can to limit this cost and BC students still receive quite a product for their $54,528. Tuition was increased 3.6 percent from the 2010-2011 year. However, financial aid increased 6.5 percent, or $5.1 million, bringing it to a total of $84.5 million. “We also remain one of just 21 private universities that is need-blind in admissions and meets the full demonstrated need of all accepted students, which reflects our ongoing commitment to making BC accessible to students of all backgrounds,” Dunn said. n

The Heights

Editorials

Quote of the week

Tone of responsibility has been set This weekend’s Plexapalooza was a test of the student body and the result was a testament to personal responsibility On Friday night, 1,300 Boston College students flocked to the Plex to see popular mash-up artists Super Mash Bros. It was the first large-scale music event to be held on campus this semester, but organizers were careful to label it a dance rather than a concert. Before the event, UGBC President Mike Kitlas and Vice President Jill Long e-mailed ticketholders to warn them about the consequences that would come with a large number of transports. Likewise, the Student Programs Office sent out a similar e-mail detailing a list of resources students could utilize in the event of an emergency. In the days leading up to the event, Mike Zarrilli, UGBC director of campus entertainment, commented that if there were an unusually high number of transports from the event, it could result in a

Monday, October 24, 2011

“The idea that to make a man work you’ve got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We’ve done that for so long that we’ve forgotten there’s any other way.” F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), American author

serious delay in the lifting of the school’s moratorium on larger concerts. According to John M. King, BCPD chief, a total of 10 students were assessed for appearing intoxicated, which resulted in six transports to St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. The Heights would like to urge administrators to see this lower number of transports as a step in the right direction. Though the number of attendees was significantly lower than those of a concert in Conte Forum, it is important to note that students had a larger window of time before the concert to drink since the doors were scheduled to open at 10:30 p.m. Many didn’t appear until around midnight, in the assumption that the main act would start late. Students thus proved their ability to have fun while drinking responsibly and maintaining control.

Searching for the silver bullet Curbing the Boston College drinking culture might require a new view on organizational behavior In the mid-20th century, psychologists and business consultants began widely exploring organizational theory, publishing volumes on how the motivations and behavior of the individual can determine the efficiency of the group. In an increasingly bureaucratic America, caring for the organization became a useful – if not necessary – course of study. When the ink was dry, it turned out that organizations are not that different from people; they can suffer from depression, anxiety, and even psychosis. Consider anxiety disorders: people place unreasonable demands on themselves and, when they do not meet them, the stress compounds. Their demands are often unrealistic and, more often than not, these people waste time dwelling on their ineptitude that could be spent grooming their talents. Defeatism ensues, followed by depression. In these situations, people (and organizations) require intervention and cognitive behavior therapy. They need a third party to help them realign their priorities and set them on the path to harmony. Now consider the recent focus of the Boston College administration to curb drinking at campus events – no doubt a worthy cause, but one that, if dwelled upon, might produce more anxieties than successes. Earlier this year, the University placed a moratorium on large-scale events in

Conte Forum to curb excessive drinking. Likewise, the BCPD has restructured its patrols this semester to be more responsive to student emergencies. The intention of these measures is, in the end, in the students’ best interests. At a human level, they merit appreciation. On a not-so-unrelated note, there have been several spikes in BCPD blotter reports this month – last weekend’s 21 reported alcohol incidents was particularly high. Yes, students may have partied heartier that weekend. But as the senstitivity to drinking increases, so will the reports. As the BC organization continues to corner the drinking culture. It becomes easy to put the blinders on and enter into the Sisyphean task of keeping up with the flow of incident reports. We are thankful that the administration consistently prioritizes student safety. But let’s start grooming our talents. Studies of a student body’s desires and motivations can perhaps produce startling results. Does having more homework make for a happier (and less intoxicated) student body? Can having a top football program, or not having a chess club, indirectly affect the drinking culture? The answers to these questions just might help the University find its harmony. We at The Heights pledge to be in the vanguard of these discussions in the hope that we at BC can find the psychologist within ourselves.

Thirty years of bringing culture to campus This year marks the 30th anniversary of Robsham Theater, the cultural hub of Boston College The 30th anniversary of Robsham Theater marks a significant milestone for the Boston College arts scene. For the past 30 years, students have collaborated to produce theatrical experiences that measure up to those of professional theater companies. They have received personal training from alumni who have worked on Broadway, and broadened their horizons as thespians. The works performed in Robsham range from classics like Rogers’ and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma to cutting edge modern dramas such as Tom Stoppard’s The Real Thing. Through this artistic progression, one

constant remains, and that is the Robsham Theater. What Robsham Theater represents goes beyond a performance space. It signifies the creative strength of BC students and faculty. As a venue for everything from BC bOp! performances to SASA culture shows, Robsham Theater proves to the community that BC possesses a thriving, if not unexpected, cultural scene. With 30 years of history behind it, The Heights encourages everyone to celebrate the next 30 years of Robsham Theater performances, beginning with the anniversary production of Into the Woods.

The Heights The Independent Student Newspaper of Boston College Established 1919 Michael Caprio, Editor-in-Chief Daniel Ottaunick, General Manager DJ Adams, Managing Editor

Contributors:

Samantha Cohen / Heights Illustration

Letters to the Editor The cycle of hatred

Since the end of the Civil War in 1865 to now, America has had a cancer growing in its bowels, subterranean at first in shadows flaring occasionally from time to time for over a 146 years. Now from shadow we see where the disease comes from men and women who foster hatred of any who do not look like them, talk like them, walk like them or call their Jehovah by their name. Men and women who hide in shadow and smoke filled rooms, who live in the Hampton’s or Paris, or London or the Swiss Alps, even in Moscow, who use people as chess pieces to play their games of chance. men and women who start world wars, Bush Wars, class struggles among the unknowing religious, racial, cultural and, yes, sexual. They allow a country to grow strong, then they rape it to death till it titers on calamity, they do this for amusement and for wealth, they use people who do not even know they are being “The Republican Party” used like whores and prostitutes, they use race, culture, and sexual orientation to divide and conquer an unknowing people. Edmond Burke said, and I quote, “For evil to flourish good men must do nothing.” For too long they have had their way from the assassination of our greatest leaders like John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and to Martin Luther King who in retrospect I would call the American Mandela. Men like John Biner of Ohio, Newt Gingrich of Georgia and even men in state government have fostered hatred and division among the poor and low income and the homeless. Now there are new groups which have become their tools of hate, fear and division of our nation. They call themselves the Tea Party movement, these were not the men who threw the tea into Boston Harbor; they say they want to cut everything having to do with social services, including social security and other programs, they claim they’re taxed too much. Will Rogers, the famed entertainer of the 1920s and 30s said, and I quote, “America is a great country, but you can’t live in it for nothing.” The Republican Party and the Tea Party have either forgotten this or are blind to it. They forget that we are one nation, Black, Asian, European, Man and Women, American Indian, Middle Eastern, and yes

gentleman and ladies of the Republican Party. Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender are also Americans. We have in our land every religion of every description Roman Catholic, Protestant; Christian evangelical Baptist and so forth, Mormon, Hindu and Seak, Buddhist, Judaism and Muslim. Muslims who have fought and died for over 225 years as soldiers, Marines, and now Airmen. Yet there are women who still foster hatred and fear and division, they use drugs, religious and cultural and racial fear and sexual orientation to keep us divided as a nation class, rich middle class and the poor and the homeless and torn apart. If I could ask one question to the American people it would be this: “When do we say enough?” It is time to end the cycle by uniting a torn nation and curing this cancer called hatred by saying no more to the men and women who hide in backrooms and humidors who make the decisions of mankind they do not have the right to, who shall be slave or master. Ancient hero said many thousands of years ago in Britain and I quote: “The Gift of Freedom is yours by right, it is not in some far off land, and it’s in us and our actions on this day, if this be our destiny then so be it, but let history remember that as free men we chose to make it so.” Luscious Arborist Castes Commander of the Sarmation Knights (you know him as King Arthur) Quoted from the movie King Arthur by Jerry Bruckheimer and Antown Farque Each of us as Americans being what we are have one right each of us citizens of this small planet, the right to choose our own destiny and our own path to each future that go on child those yet to come. The South African National Anthem says it so well in this verse at the end, “Sound a call to come together, and united we shall stand, let us live and strive for freedom.” It is time to sound the call Mr. President by doing everything you must to end the hate and stop the cycle of fear, hate and division.

The Heights welcomes Letters to the Editor not exceeding 200 words and column submissions that do not exceed 700 words for its op/ed pages. The Heights reserves the right to edit for clarity, brevity, accuracy, and to prevent libel. The Heights also reserves the right to write headlines and choose illustrations to accompany pieces submitted

to the newspaper. Submissions must be signed and should include the author’s connection to Boston College, address, and phone number. Letters and columns can be submitted online at www.bcheights.com, by e-mail to editor@bcheights.com, in person, or by mail to Editor, The Heights, 113 McElroy Commons, Chestnut Hill, Mass. 02467.

Murdock Todd Cote

Business and Operations

Editorial Clara Kim, Copy Editor Taylour Kumpf, News Editor Paul Sulzer, Sports Editor Kristopher Robinson, Features Editor Darren Ranck, Arts & Review Editor David Cote, Marketplace Editor Ana Lopez, Opinions Editor Dan Tonkovich, Special Projects Editor Alex Trautwig, Photo Editor Lindsay Grossman, Layout Editor

Mollie Kolosky, Graphics Editor David Riemer, Online Manager Therese Tully, Assoc. Copy Editor Katherine Doyle, Asst. Copy Editor Adrianna Mariella, Assoc. News Editor Molly Lapoint, Asst. News Editor Greg Joyce, Assoc. Sports Editor Chris Marino, Asst. Sports Editor Brooke Schneider, Asst. Features Editor Brennan Carley, Assoc. Arts & Review Editor

Charlotte Parish, Asst. Arts & Review Editor Matt Palazzolo, Asst. Marketplace Editor Kevin Hou, Asst. Photo Editor Woogeon Kim, Asst. Layout Editor Alex Manta, Asst. Graphics Editor Dara Fang, Asst. Online Manager Elise Taylor, Editorial Assistant Katherine McClurg, Executive Assistant

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The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Opinions

On the hunt for health excellence

Thumbs Up Geared for Social Greatness — Getting a big head about the excessive number of Facebook friends you have may be physically impossible to avoid. Our British brethren have recently released a study that claims that users with tons of Facebook friends tend to have more pronounced regions of the brain related to social skills. However, only persons with well-endowed amygalda can claim social butterfly status both online and in the real world. But with a friend like Siri, who needs those dowdy humans for conversation? Elmo and Friends — Kevin Clash, the man behind Elmo, the beloved red puppet responsible for shaping the minds of little ones across the planet, is no longer the subject of only our pint sized friends viewing pleasure, but the adult set, as well. A documentary entitled, Being Elmo: a Puppeteer’s Journey, is currently in theaters. From the reviews TU/TD is seeing, those creepy talking Elmo dolls aren’t the only ones who are tickled. Rocking Roxy’s — Che Chi’s got you down? Broke? Wishing for some lighter late night fare? Residents of the Cleveland Circle area are in luck this winter as the Roxy’s Grilled Cheese Truck is returning to feed their kooky cheesy creations to cold, hunger-stricken youth. The crew is savvy enough to be heavily involved in social media and use their Twitter (@RoxysGrilledChz) to alert consumers as to where they’ll be and when. Cho o se Your Adventure —You know when you key in Bieber’s Christmas beats on YouTube or an episode of Modern Family on Hulu, an ad is sure to follow. But since most can’t stand for homemade covers of James Taylor’s greatest hits as an alternative to videos with ads, both sites are striving to make the ad watching experience more engaging and less annoying. They now allow you to choose your own ad experience, some of which are interactive. Regardless, 30 seconds of annoyance is still quite a small price to pay for free reign of the Web. Globe Trotting — The MFA is a delightful outlet for feeling particularly collegiate and viewing art live on a Saturday afternoon, however, art is a worldwide affair, with some of the collections and works known to man housed thousands of miles from our homes in Chestnut Hill. Thankfully, Google wants to close that gap and make culture accessible to all who wish to seek it. The Google Art Project is a website that allows viewers to virtually tour the very best in fine arts museums from around the world. Now, an afternoon in Amsterdam is completely within reach.

Thumbs Down Cheap Thrills — The price of Halloween costumes just might be the most chilling aspect of preparations for the Holiday. All you wanted to be was a gecko—complete with a costume that would finally allow you to embrace your most creaturely self—but the price tag is demanding you shell out $80, plus shipping and handling. Alas, we would fall back on our creativity in moments such as this, if Halloween didn’t coincide with the midterms season that has sapped it all up these past few weeks. Twitter: @BCTUTD

John Blakeslee Every now and then I wake up, look at myself in the mirror, and think to myself, “It’s time to make some changes, John.” These moments generally come after a week of unhealthy eating or a night where I had spent too much time at one of Cleveland Circle’s charming little bars. A few days ago I had such a moment. I woke up at noon, having slept away the morning. I felt full, having already consumed my breakfast in the form of mozzarella sticks at 3 a.m.. I stepped on my scale, and looked up into the mirror. It was time to get healthy. I cannot be the only one who has felt this way before. The first month of school or so is filled with attending parties to catch up with friends you haven’t seen or insisting that you go to El Pelon because you missed it over the summer. I am very guilty of this. But now, almost two months into the semester, I decided to reverse course. While I am no stranger to the gym, I doubt that as I walk through campus people see me and think, “What a gym

rat” or, “Nice obliques.” To illustrate this point, as I was leaving Edmond’s the other day, preparing to go for a run, I bumped into a friend of mine. He noticed that I was wearing running shoes, work out clothes, and an armband for my iPod. An astute analysis of the situation led him to ask, “Are you going for a run?” I replied in the affirmative. “Oh”, he continued, “I didn’t think you ran.” Pause for a moment and consider the implications of his statement. He did not think I ran? So he has given this thought? Having seen me around campus he had apparently made the judgment that “there is a guy who doesn’t move very quickly.” I cannot really blame him though. I am the kind of person who considers climbing the million dollar stairs as counting toward my cardio for the day. I also have a tendency to make a joke out of my exercise. For example, my friend Lui and I play tennis about once a week at the Plex. We insist on strict Wimbledon rules. We wear all white and begin every match with what we call a “procession.” The procession consists of us circling around the tennis court waving to our imaginary fans before we begin playing what is usually a very mediocre game. The talented, unpretentious players next to us look on with confusion. Similarly, when I play pick-up basketball I like to whisper things to the guy I am defending. “You have a really nice dribble,” I say with a creepy smile, “And

your 3-point shot is nice too.” The extremely serious basketball players at the Plex do not find this nearly as entertaining as I do. The weight room is a complete mystery to me. It is the only place I have experienced in my life where padded chairs and benches are not the least bit enjoyable. I always try to act like I am a regular in the weight room. I walk around with confidence and stick out my chest a bit. I try to pretend that I am stretching when I am actually furiously reading the directions to one of the work out machines. I am sure to make frequent audible exhales so as to signal to my compatriots with the dumbbells that I am part of the crew. Despite my ineptitude in navigating the world of tricep curls and Under Armour sweat pants, when I get on a health kick I stick with it. Exercising can truly become addicting. If I have been working out every day for a week I cannot imagine skipping a day. But I have found that as soon as I do skip a day of exercise I am back at El Pelon requesting they add guacamole to my burrito. I am a creature of habit. Once my routine is set, I tend to stick with it. I suspect that many students at Boston College have similar workout habits as I do. Maybe they don’t parade around the tennis courts in all whites giggling like an idiot but I suspect that like me, many people’s workout habits are reactive. They feel gross so they

start working out and eating healthy. Over time they feel better and so they become complacent and quickly slip back into old habits. This could not be more evident after winter break when the Plex is packed with hordes of students who made New Year’s resolutions. Within a week or so, the crowd usually dies down. But just as my periodic health kicks do little to improve my long-term health, ignoring your health or being obsessed with it are equally unhelpful. Physical health is really not physical. It is mental. Do you work out because it makes you feel good or you know that it is healthy for you or do you do it to satisfy the image you want in the mirror? This week is Love Your Body Week on campus where talks and workshops will be going on to discuss health and how one deals with the pressures of staying in shape. The message of this event is important and praiseworthy. But the first step to achieving physical and mental health is not to love your body (hopefully that comes in time) but to love yourself. Without this important step you will always be living your life to appease someone or something else. If you can love yourself, your life is yours. The rest will fall into place. John Blakeslee is a staff columnist for The Heights. He welcomes comments at opinions@bcheights.com.

Girls are not funny Marye Moran If you like reading columns that will make you laugh out loud, you should stop here. I’m not funny. Apparently it’s not my fault, though. It’s just because I’m a girl. A recent study at the University of California at San Diego asked an equal number of male and female students to write captions for blank cartoons. Their products were ranked by a mixed-gender group, which found boys to be, on average, funnier than girls. This difference was not drastic – only about 2.2 percent – but similar studies have been done showing this subtle difference. It’s not that we understand humor differently, as a Stanford Medical School study had both men and women view cartoons, and then analyzed their reactions. Both groups had similar responses, with one of the few differences being that women on average were more surprised by

the punch line. The guys, we can infer, were thinking more on a similar train of thought as the joke. Why would this be? I have some girlfriends I’d describe as funny, but there’s no denying that it’s much less surprising when a guy makes a funny joke. And in the field of comedy, women are not absent, but they are certainly the exception. Yes, the movie Bridesmaids was a huge success, but part of the reason it got so much attention was that it was one of the few female-centered comedies. We have Kristen Wiig and a few of the SNL ladies, but other than that, the popular comedians are almost all men. If we think about male-female interactions, guys typically have to take a more active role. Yes, times have changed; Monica proposed to Chandler on Friends, Cosmopolitan magazine now says it’s okay to ask for a guy’s number, but ordinarily, this isn’t the way it works. Stereotypically, girls don’t do the approaching. They just have to be pretty, and guys have to have good personalities, or be funny, or do something to actually get the girl. Think about it – the most famous female comedians, excluding Chelsea Handler and, on good days, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, are not quite the

Bazoomie Wagon | BEN VADNAL

women who can sit there and let their attractiveness reel men in. They can’t fit that female stereotype that gives girls less of a need for humor. So is that the case that girls don’t need to be funny, so we don’t develop joke-telling skills? In other realms, this is the case and causes many of the differences between genders. Back in the day, when men had to be hunters and protectors, they needed strength. So they’re typically bigger and stronger than their female counterparts. And women are meant to bear children, so we naturally have wider hips to pop those babies out. Maybe our sense of humor works the same way. Another reason for this comedic gender gap is just the expected behavior of both sexes. Guys can make fun of each other more easily, which transitions well into comedy, where much of the humor is poking fun at a person or idea. Girls, though, are less likely to rag on one another in normal circumstances, qualifying every statement with a few “no offense”s or “I like her but…”s. If we’re too timid to offend, we could never make it in comedy. I’m not trying to offend my own gender – but the fact that I just wrote that line proves my point. Women, stereotypically the cattier gender, are

always so afraid of coming across this way. We’re naturally more nurturing (it comes with the child-bearing hips) and just less inclined to hack a Facebook status at a friend’s expense or make an offensive, but funny, joke. That, combined with the fact that it’s just not as expected, and we don’t need humor as much, makes us the less funny gender. However, if we look at why certain people are funny, those who are humorous out of necessity usually are not the most enviable. Humor is often a way to cope, and looking at some of the popular comedians today, Sarah Silverman suffered from extreme depression, at one point taking up to 16 Xanax per day, and Kathy Griffin faced a variety of eating disorders. And when we compare ourselves to the boys, yes, it would be nice to be funny, but it’s just so much easier to sit here and look pretty. So I apologize that my column isn’t as witty as it would be if I was a man, and if you’re looking for humor, check out the comics in this paper – unsurprisingly, a guy does those. Marye Moran is a staff columnist for The Heights. She welcomes comments at opinions@bcheights.com.

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

arts&review

Monday, October 24, 2011

Wicked Cultured

B-line bistro redeemers

into the mind of ‘into the woods’

Charlotte Parish Dining hall food always leaves something to be desired. Even though Boston College manages to be ranked highly among the nation’s colleges for food services, massproduced food never can match up to a home cooked meal or a fantastic restaurant service. But then we run into the Catch22 of college life: spend dining bucks (or Monopoly money as it usually feels like) for mediocre fare, or shell out precious, reallife, green dollars for a fantastic eat? It’s a serious dilemma. On one shoulder I have my Greek relatives telling me that food is life, it is an experience, it is worth savoring and appreciating. One the other shoulder, I have my work check, dancing and laughing maniacally as I try to save most of it while still going into Boston on the weekends. But, coming to save the day on a white horse and carrying shining armor is the B-line! That is a really strange thing to say. First, who actually likes the B-line? It has so many stops (I’m pointing a finger at you Boston University – why can’t your students walk two blocks without needing another station?) and is one of the most rickety subway lines in the city. Secondly, it’s really kind of dramatic for a train to be a hero. Does it really do much of anything that merits knightly status? Answer: yes. If you have completely abandoned the Bline for Reservoir stop, think again. In fact, it is really just one stop that has rekindled my faith in the B-line: the Harvard Street stop. There are so many restaurants in Boston that I often forget to check the outskirts of the city for something cheaper and more unique. And thanks to Harvard Street, I now have two new restaurants to satisfy both of the devil-angels on my shoulders. The first establishment to make me cautiously hopeful that my dream of deliciousness and non-poverty could come true was a brand of food that I had never tried before: Shilla Garden. I can’t pretend to be a connoisseur of Korean BBQ, but regardless this place was incredibly fun. Having the food cooked literally in the center of your table and smelling the spices as they roasted was tantalizing to the point of trauma (especially since trying to get a group of 12 off campus takes longer than the Big Dig and we were mildly starving upon arrival). I don’t know why watching your food being cooked is so much more entertaining than going straight form ordering to a fully prepared plate, but it decidedly is. Plus, who doesn’t like daring each other to be the first to try something only 10 seconds off the grill? The shorter the amount of time, the grander your victory. Any pain from the searing sensation in your mouth is just weakness. Already enthusiastic about the magic of the Harvard Street stop, I returned this past week, cautiously hopeful, to see about striking gold twice at Soul Fire. And for anyone who likes Southern comfort food (read: everyone in the world) like corn bread, various fried meats, ribs, and friedmacaroni-and-cheese (as if the original wasn’t delicious enough) then Soul Fire is perfection. Although fried food is something easily done by dining halls, there is still such a difference between food that you eat because it is bad for you and therefore pretty tasty, and food you eat because it is deliciously unhealthy. In the case of Soul Fire, the ‘delicious’ adjective comes first. And once again, the entertainment factor is crucial at this restaurant; although it’s great that you can get a huge trough of vitals for a fantastically low price, it is even better to watch four guys try to make their way through this mountain of food. The experience is far more hilarious than a televised hot dog eating contest (which are slightly creepy to be honest) because, after all, with live entertaining, heckling is completely allowed and encouraged when these same guys wimp out with only a couple ribs to go. (“There are starving children somewhere, finish those!”) So for the sake of your stomach and your wallet, give the B-line another chance. The only other thing they need to work on is for the drivers to stop ignoring me and stare straight ahead a few seconds only to drive away as I am standing right next to their door, waving frantically! I know you see me, sir. That was not appreciated.

Charlotte Parish is the Assistant Arts & Review editor of The Heights. She can be reached at arts@bcheights.com

courtesy of sean murphy

Working with students to draw out the black humor of Lapine’s musical retelling of classic fairytales, Daigneault is excited to be back at his alma mater for such an energetic show.

For Robsham’s 30th anniversary, a Grimm Brothers remake hits the stage By Darren Ranck

Arts & Review Editor obsham Theater celebrates its 30th anniversary with Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s musical Into the Woods. Paul Daigneault, recipient of the Monan professorship, directs his cast in a story of fairy tales gone wild. The Heights sat with Daigneault and members of the cast to talk about the challenging work they faced and Daigneault’s off-campus pedigree. Darren Ranck: How is it working with students again in comparison to working with professionals? Paul Daigneault: It’s great, I actually don’t see much of a dif-

ference. As far as training goes, some of the professionals are more trained and more seasoned. But as far as intelligence and a willingness to go, I don’t see a difference between the professionals I work with and the students here. It’s fun to be very well-rounded and have a really, really high work ethic. With the adult themes in the play – because some of the actors in the play haven’t experienced these things in their own livesit’s hard for them to really understand. But I’m talking about like having children. There’s a whole thing about children and losing your children. And you know, if you don’t have children, you don’t really get that yet, you don’t understand the intense emotion behind it from the parents’ end. Same thing with

See ‘Woods’ Preview, B4

University Wind Ensemble pays tribute to Russia By Christina Quinn Heights Editor

The high ceilings and wood paneling of Gasson Hall’s Irish Room were echoing with beautiful notes composed half the globe away on Saturday night. Boston College’s University Wind Ensemble (UWE), led by conductor Sebastian Bonaiuto, performed their first show of the year, “From Russia, With Love,” with great energy and grace, a fitting tribute to the Russian composers they chose to highlight. When asked about the inspiration for the concert’s theme, Bonaiuto praised the distinctive writing style many

Russian composers have, one with great cultural influences rooted in a rich artistic culture. He noted that sometimes these same talented composers are not given the attention they deserve because they are seen as being affiliated with both the Soviet Union and the stereotypes such an association historically holds. “Many of these composers produced a great deal of well-written wind music,” according to Bonaiuto, making UWE the perfect group of on-campus musicians to perform a tribute to their legacy. The show featured several compositions by Dmitri Shostakovich, beginning with the shows first piece, “Festive Overture.” The piece, composed in 1954, would perhaps be better recognized contemporarily

for its role as the 1980 Summer Olympics theme when the games were held in Moscow. “The Fire of Eternal Glory” quickly followed, beginning light and majestically and building to a triumphant and almost proud finish. Based on the feeling of the piece, it is unsurprising to learn that Shostakovich wrote the work for a war memorial, where the song continues to be played on an hourly basis. The final Shostakovich work highlighted was “Jazz Suite No. 2,” a five-part suite ranging from fast paced marches to powerful waltzes. Starting off with an aggressive march, whose military-like tempo was kept by the snare drum,

See UWE, B2

Teamwork and laughs make Fleabag BC’s best By Joe Allen Heights Staff

This past weekend, My Mother’s Fleabag heralded the return of Boston College comedy club events with their Fall Cafe show. In one hour, the group previewed their upcoming big fall show by being consistently hilarious and with a relentlessly high hilarity. Fleabag started the night out with a game that demonstrated how funny they can be when working together as a team. In this opening skit, Lindsey James, A&S ’13, had to guess why she was late for work only from the pantomiming of the Fleabag team. The uninformed Lindsey figured out her convoluted excuse (which included riding a sphinx) quickly due both to her skill and her funny, silent helpers. By making this hard game look easy, My Mother’s Fleabag started their hour of comedy out right. After their opener, Fleabag charged right into their next game, growing-shrinking machine. The group was well aware that they had to eliminate dead time between games to pack in as much humor as they could in 60 minutes and to keep the audience interested. Growing-shrinking machine, along with Fleabag’s other team-based games, worked well because this group understands, and has taught its newcomers, that listening is the key to making any scene funny. The game involves five people, with each person stepping

i nside Arts this issue

in with a new scene. In less experienced hands, this game could devolve into talking over each other and losing track of the scene one is in. Fleabag, however, worked together to make even the less interesting scenes in the game funny. Another strength of My Mother’s Fleabag that its Fall Cafe showcased is its ability to keep the humor light and silly, avoiding any taboo subject matter. While steering clear of the offensive might seem obvious, comedy clubs can fail to do so at times, causing audience laughs to transform into uncomfortable groans. Fleabag avoided this trap all night by picking appropriate scene inspirations and by consciously favoring absurd humor. This skill was best exhibited in a game called Bing, in which a Fleabag member has to top the previous action or line of dialogue any time an out-of-scene teammate yells “Bing!” The game can often become over-the-top in dark fashion, but the two girls involved in the scene used their talent to escalate the scene to the ridiculously funny instead of the ridiculously awkward. While the cafe show did prove that every member of My Mother’s Fleabag is a great improviser, not every game was a joke-filled success. In particular, one game that worked as four one-person scenes was fairly hit-and-miss. This “poem” game was performed by having four Fleabag

See Fleabag, B2

‘Paranormal Activity 3’ spooks audiences

The newest installment of the horror series manages to scrounge up a decent amount of scares, B3

Kevin Hou / Heights Editor

In collaboration with ‘Binding Friendship,’ the BC Art Club created awe-inspiring pieces.

‘Friendship’ leads to art Ricci exhibit sponsors creative collaboration By Christine Zhao Heights Staff

Boston College gets a bad reputation for not being “diverse” enough, but if the Bapst student art exhibit is any indication, then this Jesuit “Ivy” is cutting through the critics. BC’s Art Club, in collaboration with Fr. Jeremy Clarke of the Asian Studies department, put together an art exhibit to complement Binding Friendship: Ricci, China, and Jesuit Cultural Learnings. Binding Friendship (an exhibition previously showcased in the Burns Library), meant to shine the spotlight on Matteo Ricci’s

Next year’s Oscar race is up in the air

2011’s race seemed to be totally in the bag, but next year’s show could be entirely unpredictable, B2

historical journey to China, therefore extending the Jesuit ties to the Far East. On Wednesday evening, the opening reception for the gallery was held in the basement of Bapst Library. Walking down the stairs, the first thing visitors noticed was the tantalizing aromas of real food because the event received funding to buy theme-appropriate delicacies, including pad Thai and vegetable stir fry, to make for a more well-rounded evening representing different facets of culture. More important than the food, of course, was the artwork. There were gorgeous oil paintings, striking sculptures, awe-inspiring ingenuity, and some beautifully written compositions were featured. The focus of most of the

See ‘Friendship,’ B2

Bestsellers...............................B3 Box Office Report........................B3

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Oscars remain as unpredictable as ever with the coming months Dan Siering Excuse me while I pat myself on the back. Around this time last year, I correctly predicted (with a little help from my favorite movie websites) the winners of Best Picture, Actor, and Actress for the 2011 Oscars. Ok, so maybe Natty Light was a shoe-in for top actress, and The King’s Speech was bred to be a Oscar grubbing monster, but what’s the point of making predictions if you can’t gloat about them after the fact? Now comes my chance to make these accurate prognostications an annual affair. But looking at this year’s field, 2012 looks a little less predictable than its predecessor. Best Picture The biggest question mark right now looks to be the ceremony’s top spot, a competition between several Goliaths and one David. The first and most obvious big hitter is War Horse, Steven Spielberg’s film about a companionship between a young boy and his horse during the First World War. With a name like Spielberg’s attached to a film adaptation of a successful Broadway play of the same name, this film has earned a lot of

initial hype. This might also have something to do with the release of a few brilliant trailers that fall somewhere between E.T. and Saving Private Ryan on the emotional spectrum. But will the Academy pin War Horse as a film that toys too much with the emotions of the public? My guess is that the Academy members will be more attracted to The Descendants, the much-anticipated return of writer/director Alexander Payne. Starring George Clooney, this story revolves around the tumultuous interrelationships of a Hawaiian family and looks to be somewhat of a dark comedy. This will be Payne’s first time in the director’s chair since 2004’s Sideways, in which he won an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Other than perhaps the Cohen Brothers, Payne might be the most acclaimed filmmaker within the industry. 2012 seems like the year that Payne will continue to reap the benefits of consistent critical success. Then there’s the story of the little engine that could: The Artist. The French independent film tells the tale of actor George Valentin as he struggles to adapt during the advent of talking pictures in Hollywood. The Artist has gotten a considerable amount of

Oscar hype from the Weinstein brothers, the Hollywood big shots who are distributing the film in the states. Fresh off their successful promotion of The King’s Speech, the Weinsteins’ aim to beat out a slew of big studio competitors. Yet, unlike last year’s awards season, this year seems to have a few too many big names for an indie win. Best Actor Similar to the Best Picture, the race for top male performance of 2012 is The Artist versus a barrage of A-listers. Brad Pitt (Moneyball), Leonardo DiCaprio (J. Edgar), and George Clooney (The Descendants) round out the lineup of Hollywood big hitters. But with only one Academy Award winner between the three (Clooney won Best Supporting Actor in 2005 for Syriana), The Artist lead man Jean Dujardin has a little less to overcome than one might originally think. Is it possible that in 2012 a man will win Best Actor for a silent movie? My Oscar intuition is yes. But be on alert for a couple actors riding on a high upward slope of critical admiration. Michael Shannon (Take Shelter) and Michael Fassbender (Shame) have gained some footing in the race with performances that dive deep into psychological states.

Courtesy of Allmoviephoto.com

George Valentin portrays a silent movie star in potential Oscar winner ‘The Artist,’ a critical hit. Best Actress This category looks like only one of the bunch that contains a clear cut favorite. I mean, come on, Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher? It has been some time since such a lethal combination has been brought to award season. The Streeper currently holds the record for most Oscar nominations with 16, but she has only graced the stage for an acceptance speech twice, the last one being almost 30 years ago. The Academy is notorious for using top awards as more of an ode to great career (a la Jeff Bridges for Crazy

Heart) rather than to acknowledge a single great performance. This looks to be shaping up as the year that Hollywood pays homage to one of their greatest talents. However, Michelle Williams’ upcoming role as Marilyn Monroe in My Week with Marilyn and Charlize Theron’s forthcoming collaboration with Jason Reitman in Young Adult might shake things up a bit.

Dan Siering is a staff columnist for The Heights. He welcomes comments at arts@ bcheights.com.

Musicians join in lively tunes UWE, from B1 and leading into the first of two waltzes, the powerful, masculine feel of the suite was immediately noticeable. Moving into “Dance II,” a jolly, lilting selection, the flutes and piccolo had a chance to shine amidst the trills of higher notes. The second waltz began with a similar sound to the first, focusing on minor notes and defying the stereotypical expectations of a waltz with its touch of sadness. Moving into the final dance section, it was most apparent just how technically demanding Russian compositions can be to play. The tambourine and xylophone rushed along with the galloping pace of the song, whose sounds almost evoke thoughts of a horse race, complete with an abrupt ending. The Ensemble carried the notes beautifully, truly showing their mastery of the music. Kevin hou / Heights editor One of the most notable performances of the Student artists played a strong role in the ‘Binding Friendship’ art exhibition. some with abstract approaches and whimsy. night, “Variations on a Theme of Glinka” composed by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, featured a beautiful oboe solo by Rachel Schmit, A&S ’12. Beginning with a booming start by the lower instruments and percussion, the music moved forward like tentative footsteps into an elegant melody that was very lively and mischievous at times, tempered with gentle accents of triangle. At times, Schmit’s oboe seemed to be calling back and forth with the trumpet secEuropean cultures meeting, in- Laura Huggard, A&S ’15, also used ‘Friendship,’ from B1 cluding a piece called “Duality” by a proverb as her inspiration, and artwork was the crossing of West Mary Chen showing a face com- included in her painting of Confuand East and their mutually benefi- posed of half Asian features and cius: “Real knowledge is to know cial blending of cultures. half European. Another drawing the extent of one’s ignorance.” Students were prompted to by Charlotte Shih, A&S ’14, shows Students also impressed with “create new works of art that ex- two arms, one representing the the sheer whimsicality of their plore, enrich, celebrate, mash-up, Western arm, the other represent- pieces, which must have been fun expand, or question” their un- ing the Eastern arm, helping to to craft. Maria Liang, CSOM ’13, derstanding of the Burns Binding fill in the lines on one another’s created a life-size crane out of playFriendship exhibit. Along with hands. Student artist Francesca ing cards and some wire. To create their artwork, students were asked McCaffrey, A&S ’14, drew a map the larger feathers on the body of to write a statement describing the of China for her piece, and in the the crane, she cut each playing card inspiration for their work and how center of the country wrote “The into three equal sections. For the the exhibit led them there. For harmony of friends is like music. smaller ones, she cut the cards into background information, here is a The discord of enemies is like even smaller pieces until the highly Spark Notes version of Ricci’s jour- noise.” Around it she wrote a series impressive product was finished ney: In 1582, he arrived in Macau, a of phrases in various languages, and kept stable by only some StyPortuguese trading post in China. including French, Latin, Mandarin, rofoam and a water bottle. Claire At the time, Christian missions and Italian. She chose to “tie” the Townley, A&S ’14, constructed a were mostly limited to Macau, and quotes around the country, and the fun piece about hats, inspired by the few locals who had converted phrases outside the boundaries of the hat that Matteo Ricci is deto Christianity were expected to China are meant to represent the picted wearing throughout all the assimilate into the Portuguese life- ideas about Jesuits at the time. portraits of him in history. Frances style there. Ricci was the first to try Some took more abstract ap- Goh made a life-size teabag, and to learn the Chinese culture and proaches – Sade Garvey’s, A&S ’12, placed a bottle of wine inside to language. He became one of the painting featured an explosion of demonstrate the changing palates first Western scholars to success- colors, featuring lines and shapes of both Easterners and Westerners fully master the classical Chinese of all different lengths and sizes. – more and more Chinese consumlanguage. Later on, he composed Part of Garvey’s inspiration was ers are in the market for wines the very first European-style map her interest in the concept of map- rather than teas, and wineries have of the world in Chinese, called the ping and travel. Joon Park’s, A&S certainly been taking advantage “Impossible Black Tulip.” Many ’12, ceramic sculpture somewhat of that. students incorporated maps into resembles a face, and was inspired The Bapst student galleries their own artwork in order to show by an ancient Chinese proverb that are always a treat, but this one in the connection between two sides means: “keeping someone at arm’s particular was, as Sheila Gallagher, of the world. length with false respect.” Park a professor in the Fine Arts departThe approaches that students meant to show the distance be- ment puts it, a “rare opportunity took varied from the more straight- tween things by keeping spaces in for the whole community to work forward drawings of Chinese and between the pieces of the sculpture. together on something.” n

Bapst galleries foster a ‘rare opportunity’ for collaboration

My Mother’s Fleabag proves its comedic worth with its fall cafe Fleabag, from B1 members come up, one at a time, and tell a rhyming story based on an audience inspiration. Some of the off-the-cuff poem weren’t very funny, with some team members struggling to be humorous while under the rhyming restriction. While the low point of the show, the poem skits showed promising signs, especially from Ceara O’Sullivan, A&S ’14, who turned the inspiration “football” into a great song about an awkward boy just trying to fit in. With only two of eight games breaking the group down into individuals, My Mother’s Fleabag understands that it works best as a team. The comedy club used their group chemistry to great effect in the funniest improv skit of the night, Pan Left. More so than any other game in the Fall Cafe, Pan Left showed that the group could make a whole audience laugh even when under strict restrictions. In the game, four Fleabag members stood in a square, with only the two in front performing a scene. At any time, a sidelined member could

yell “pan left/right!” and the square would shift, producing a different pair and a different scene. The sudden shifts would trip up many people, but My Mother’s Fleabag had the abrupt scene transitions mastered and used them to make their jokes hit even harder. The biggest complaint I could come up with about Fleabag’s Fall Cafe, that it was too short, only proves how funny they were in the short time they had. As they finished the last game, many audience members were screaming “encore!” Thus, the Fall Cafe not only showcased My Mother’s Fleabag’s talents, but also whetted the audience’s appetite for the group’s big show in early November. After two months of virtually no notable on-campus events, some might wonder what the performing BC clubs have been doing. My Mother’s Fleabag’s Fall Cafe answered this question – they’ve been practicing. If the comedy club is hitting this hard this early in the semester, then their big fall show should be a guaranteed comedic success. n

tion, eventually leading into the dazzling speed and variation of her concluding solo. When asked what she liked best about this performance, Schmit humbly noted her enjoyment of being able to play such energetic music alongside musicians she also considers to be friends. Between the last two pieces of the night, the opportunity was taken to introduce the producer of the show, Randi Edmonds, who is also the newest assistant director of the BC Bands Department. After a round of applause, the last piece of the evening, Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Procession of Nobles,” began with a round of trumpet fanfare. With lots of percussive punctuation throughout, the regal composition combined swirling rounds of notes ending in snare drum rolls with sections of the piece highlighted by the tambourine. A perfect conclusion to the evening, the piece ended in emphatic layered drum rolls and a final culmination of all the Ensemble’s beautiful instruments. Combining a range of instruments from flutes to bassoons to euphoniums, the UWE puts on a delightful performance for any fan of classical music. Anyone who may have missed the show this past weekend can enjoy the group’s next performance, “A Christmas Festival,” on Dec. 10 in the same location. It will surely be an opportunity worth remembering and relishing, much like this wonderful concert. n

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Creepy ‘Activity’ continues the series’ supernatural tendencies By Carolina Del Busto For the Heights

The third time around is the most charming when it comes to Paranormal Activity 3. In Paranormal Activity the footage was dated from 2006, in Paranormal Activity 2, it was from 2005, and in Paranormal AcParanormal tiv ity 3, it Activity 3: goes further Henry Joost back in time Paramount to 1988. Going back to the beginning, directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman take you on a trip to the 1980s, when eternally haunted Katie and Kristi are little girls experiencing a chilling haunting at a young age. Paranormal Activity 3 is the prequel to the first film, and is supposed to answer the question of how it all started, why Katie and Kristi are being targeted and haunted by a dark presence. It succeeds, to a certain extent. Like the first and second Paranormal Activity movies, the third is filmed in

a home-movie-meets-reality-TV style. The evil presence is back, and one important thing that this prequel does is give the poltergeist a name: Toby. Toby is the entity that has been following Katie and Kristi around all these years. The breakout stars of the film were the two young actresses who played Katie and Kristi, Chloe Csengery and Jessica Brown, respectively. The girls were incredibly natural on camera, especially since they were dealing with a supernatural subject. What was great about the film was that is was true to detail. The decor of the house, the clothes, the cameras, even the cars were all perfectly done in an ’80s fashion. This added a sense of authenticity to the tapes and convinced the audience that it really could have been filmed over 20 years ago. It also brought a new type of camera angle audiences have not seen before in the previous two films. Dennis, played by Christopher Nicolas Smith, creates a makeshift oscillating camera using a fan. This allows the camera to pick up a bigger space, and at the same time amplifies

the already suspenseful atmosphere. As the camera moves away from one area, it leaves you wondering what’s going on in the other part of the room, and then when it shifts back – boom. If you go into the movie expecting to see much of what was featured in the trailer, think again. This is one of those rare cases where the trailer and the actual film are not as similar as one is used to. There are two sides to this. The upside: the movie gives you scenes you have never seen before and thus makes everything new and that much more exciting. The downside: you go in with certain expectations and leave unsatisfied – you will never know what happened after Kristi poured water on a figure, or who that man was that Dennis and Julie were talking to, or the biggest disappointment, who’s house was on fire and why? Unfortunately, it was a tad slow at the beginning, focusing more on the mundane than the frightening. But when the filmed picked up, it did so in the Paranormal way audiences love: doors creaking, lights flashing, glass breaking,

Though ridiculous, ‘Muskeeters’ works

Courtesy of Allmoviephoto.com

The latest ‘Paranormal’ installment makes a jump to the past, this time focusing on the kids. furniture moving, and those oh-so-startling black figures. The scares don’t come as often as one would like, yet when they do happen, they still carry that typical Paranormal jolt that will make you jump, squeal, and gasp.

For those who saw the first two installments, Paranormal Activity 3 is a must-see to help add a few pieces to the paranormal puzzle. Just in time for the spookiest holiday of the year, it will certainly leave you second-guessing the next strange noise you hear. n

Box Office Report title

weekend gross

weeks in release

2 photos courtesy of allmoviephoto.com

1. Paranormal Activity 3

39.0

2. Real steel

11.3

3. Footloose

10.8

Courtesy of Allmoviephoto.com

Logan Lerman leads an all-star cast that also includes Christoph Waltz and Orlando Bloom in the swashbuckling new ‘Three Musketeers.’ By Sean Keeley For the Heights

The Three Musketeers is so completely and unabashedly ridiculous that you can almost hear the filmmakers gleefully giggling as they pile on absurdity after absurdity. Director Paul W.S. Anderson and company The Three Musketeers: take the basic structure of the cla ssic Paul W.S. Anderson Alexandre Impact Pictures Dumas novel and filter it through a steampunk sensibility - complete with garish costumes, anachronistic dialogue, slow-motion swordfights, and a climatic CGI battle between flamethrower-equipped airships. No, this is not your father’s Three Musketeers, and it is certainly not Dumas’. But this new version is so playfully excessive and wildly improbable that viewers will find themselves charmed. As I exited the theater with a boyish grin on my face, I found myself wondering why more modern action movies couldn’t be like this: lively, colorful, funny, and just a little bit crazy. The movie begins with a mission gone wrong: the titular heroes Athos (Matthew Macfadyen), Aramis (Luke Evans), and Porthos (Ray Stevenson) are betrayed by the conniving Milady de Winter (Milla Jovovich), and her lover the Duke of Buckingham (Orlando Bloom). A year later, the Musketeers are a shadow of their former selves,

B+ B

drinking themselves into a stupor, and loitering around the streets of Paris. There, they run into the young D’Artagnan (Logan Lerman), a brash upstart who has come to the city to become a Musketeer himself. Needless to say, the events of the plot conspire to bring the foursome together against the conniving plots of Buckingham, Milady, and Cardinal Richelieu (Christoph Waltz). A movie like The Three Musketeers rises or falls based on the camaraderie of the cast. Fortunately, the actors playing the Musketeers establish a natural, relaxed chemistry and riff off of each other in an enjoyable way. On the villains’ side, Jovovich has a lot of fun playing a combination of femme fatale and action star - as she ensnares lovers, navigates booby traps, and duels guards with equal grace. She is the most memorable presence in the movie, and the camera seems to be in love with her, following her every move obsessively and sometimes in slow motion – not surprising when you consider that Jovovich is actually the director’s wife. Elsewhere, the supporting cast rarely disappoints: from Bloom hamming it up as a sneering villain to a comical Freddie Fox playing the effete and petulant young king. There are a few missteps, though. Waltz, so chilling and cold as Colonel Landa in Inglourious Basterds, is here wasted in an underwritten villain role. What’s worse, Logan Lerman is woefully miscast in the important role of D’Artagnan.

He displays no real sense of personality or charisma, and never shakes the impression of being too boyish for the role. But such things hardly seem to matter when the action comes around. Say what you will about the caliber of Anderson’s previous work (his credits include the Resident Evil movies and Alien vs. Predator), but the man knows how to direct action. Too many action movies today are shot in drab, lifeless colors and edited so rapidly as to make them incoherent. Anderson is more precise than that: his combat scenes are carefully choreographed and presented to the audience clearly, and he is not afraid to use a color palette. The large CGI setpieces are rendered with unusual care and imagination. Even Anderson’s use of 3-D, a technology I typically find distracting and unnecessary, is commendable. From the prologue, which brings the viewer in between the lines of a map, to the fight scenes, to the subtle use of foreground to accentuate set and prop details, Anderson shows that 3-D has real potential as a storytelling technique and not just as a gimmick. I am tempted to call The Three Musketeers a guilty pleasure, but that would be doing it a disservice. The movie is certainly a triumph of style over substance, but it is rare to see an action movie this visually appealing, and rarer still to see a director with the audacity to take a classic tale and put such a bold, irreverent, and loopy spin on it. n

4. The three musketeers

8.8

5. The ides of march

4.9

6. Dolphin Tale

4.2

7. Moneyball

4.1

8. Johnny English Reborn

3.8

9. The thing

3.1

10. 50/50

2.8

bestsellers of hardcover fiction 1. the Best of me Nicholas Sparks 2. the Marriage Plot Jeffrey Eugenides 3. snuff Terry Pratchett 4. the Affair Lee Child 5. Shock wave John Sanford

6. A Dance with dragons Carl Hiaasan 7. The Night circus Erin Morgenstern 8. Lethal Sandra Brown 9. the Dovekeepers Alice Hoffman 10. 1225 Christmas tree lane Debbie Macomber SOURCE: Publisher’s Weekly

Jeff Nichols leads ‘Take Shelter’ cast with startling perfection By Dan Siering Heights Staff

In this ever complicated world of struggle and strife, there is very little that doesn’t inject anxiety or unease into our psyche, and there is very little that we can do to escape it. With Take Shelter, writer/ director Jeff Nichols takes dead aim at this fact, building a sense of modern unease, and Take Shelter: he hits his mark w ith Jeff Nichols distressing Grove Hill a c c u r a c y. This strikingly original meditation on a modern concept will keep you in a blanket of discomfort while building a mountain of anticipation toward a stunning closing sequence. Very few films this year will leave you with more profound questions lingering in your head as you walk out of the theater. Set in a rural Ohio town, Take Shelter tells the tale of Curtis LaForche (Michael Shannon) as he lives a typical blue-collar lifestyle with his loving wife, Samantha (Jessica Chastain), and his young daughter Hannah, who is deaf. Despite struggling to tend to the demands of raising a deaf child, Curtis and Samantha seem to

A-

be happy with their current state and are very much in love with each other. Yet, underneath the charm and love, there seems to be some ominous unknown presence lurking. A storm also seems to be churning off screen. Then, suddenly, Curtis’ nightmares begin. Within all these night terrors exists an immense, brooding storm that prompts the people around Curtis to viciously attack him. First it is a dog that bites his arm. Then it is townsfolk randomly attacking him and his daughter in their house. As the night terrors begin to intensify, a sense of unease and impending doom begins to transfer into the main character’s actual life. Coming from a family with a history of mental illness, the audience begins to wonder if they are watching an insane man in a sane world or a prophet in a doomed world. As the nightmares become daytime hallucinations, these alternatives of reality become indistinguishable. Much of the novelty of Take Shelter comes from Nichols’ skills as a scriptwriter. The conflict is drawn out in such a way in that it is impossible to determine its source or if it even exists at all within the film’s reality. You feel you know the answer to this question early on, but then

the story pushes you in an entirely different direction. And despite the action being deliberate and drawn out, the film’s ambiguity forces the viewer to enter each scene with caution. The aesthetic composition of the film also bolsters the brooding and foreboding aurora that Nichols aims to produce. Characters are predominantly placed amidst vast backgrounds of flat plains, illustrating a chilling sense of vulnerability when the characters are placed up against this nameless impending doom. Nichols chooses not to attach a face or a description to the forthcoming doom, but yet the conflict is convincing and the suspense is nerve-wracking. It is rare to know so little about such a villainous presence. However, in most psychological thrillers such as Shelter, the burden of making the premise authentic lies on the shoulders of the lead. Here, Nichols has found a pair of strong shoulders with Michael Shannon. With a storied history of portraying frightening and unstable characters, Shannon brings forth an impressive array of talents playing a man who falls into a world of obscurity. Shannon’s power to suppress emotions gives his characters an interesting depth

while also building a palpable degree of suspense. Viewers find it hard to take their eyes of Curtis as he inhumanely suppresses his frustration during his increased mental instability. Here more than ever, Chastain provides brilliant support as a wife who

remains loyal even after Curtis’ actions become increasingly illogical. No actress in Hollywood emits more beauty in distress and confusing situations than Chastain, and, with Take Shelter, she can add another notable movie to her bolstering resume. n

Courtesy of Allmoviephoto.com

One of the year’s best, ‘Shelter’ features the talents of the scarily unstable Michael Shannon.

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Leaving a trail of Bread Crumbs a brief overview of ‘Into the Woods’ by brennan carley | assoc. arts editor One of Stephen Sondheim’s most celebrated musicals, Into the Woods has spawned scores of revivals and spinoffs, and has garnered almost as many accolades. Broadway legend Bernadette Peters, herself a Boston College staple with her Pops on the Heights performance in 2009, originated the role of the Witch in the first production. Frequent West Wing guest actress and star of the stage, Joanna Gleason, won a Tony Award for her portrayal of the Baker’s Wife in 1987. The show won raves from critics and fans alike, and spent the next two years touring around the country to sold-out audiences. The musical incorporates characters and storylines from a number of Brothers Grimm fairytales. Protagonists come from Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, and Cinderella. The main characters spend the majority of the first act searching for their own happily ever after. Act Two, however, deals with

the fallout that comes with the downsides of living in a fairytale. What is one to do with a dead giant in the backyard? Will Cinderella’s marriage to the handsome prince really lead to a fruitful and beautiful future? Disney, this is not. Into the Woods gained a massive fan base in its original incarnation, and productions sprouted up all around the globe. In London, Harry Potter star Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) played the Baker’s Wife and won an Oliver Award (the United Kingdom equivalent of a Tony) in the process. When the show was revived in New York in 2002, it attracted stars like Christopher Sieber (later of Spamalot) and Laura Benanti (of Gypsy and this fall’s failed The Playboy Club), but its retooled plot left many fans feeling burned. It was nominated for several Tony Awards nonetheless. One of Into the Wood’s most popular iterations was its 2010 jaunt in Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, located in the

depths of a wooded area that lent legitimacy to the plot of the show. Judi Dench was heralded for her repeat performance as the (albeit this time recorded) voice of the Giant. In the years since, the musical has travelled as far as Melbourne, Catalan, and Singapore. Many have wondered why Hollywood has never picked up Into the Woods for a film treatment, but alas, in the early 1990s, such a version flailed around for a while before getting left on the cutting room floor. Famous director Penny Marshall (Big) held a reading in 1994 that featured huge names like Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Cher, Goldie Hawn, Danny DeVito, and Roseanne Barr in the lead roles. Later versions were said to have attracted celebs like Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, and Susan Sarandon, but plotlines were again being retooled and songs were added. It was eventually abandoned as a project in 1997. Though many may not know it, Into

courtesy of google.com

the Woods serves as the inspiration for many of today’s cultural mainstays. Last fall, the Disney Company released Tangled, a musical version of Rapunzel that features the vocal talent of Sondheim-veteran Donna Murphy (as Mother Gothel). In 2001, the movie version of Shrek premiered, based loosely off William Steig’s classic book that, in turn, took much from the theatricality associated with the characters of Into the Woods. Last night on ABC, fables came to life once again in Once Upon a

Time, a majorly hyped soap opera-fairytale hybrid that employs big names like Ginnifer Goodwin (Big Love) and Jennifer Morrison (House) in the roles of Snow White and her long lost daughter, respectively. For the past two and a half decades, Into the Woods has never lost an ounce of its staying power. Audiences have been swept up by its whimsy and resiliency for years, and Robsham’s production of the show seems set to be one of BC’s best. n

‘Woods’ dwellers ‘Woods’ Preview, from B1 loss. I can’t speak for the cast with their experiences with loss, but the huge loss that happens to some of the people, it’s not in their world experience yet. It doesn’t mean they can’t act it. It just means that it is a larger leap for studens than adults in some ways. How does it compare, the teaching versus the art of directing, and knowing what to ask of people? Teaching is great. It keeps me young. It keeps me enthusiastic about the kind of art that I work in, because I’m constantly surrounded by people who are discovering it for the first time, and it makes me looks at art, you know, theater, in a new way everyday. The best thing about what I teach is I teach the fun class, the class that everyone wants to take, musical theater performance. Well, not everybody, but the people who take that class really want to be in that room and so I never have to pull teeth, people really want to do the work. You know, it’s my job to cast them in scenes that they’ll be successful in. You’ve obviously performed before. It seems now you primarily direct? Yes, now I only direct. I performed in college a lot; it was fun. I was a decent actor. I was always the actor who wasn’t able or didn’t have the training to really let myself go, but when I found directing – I found that here, I took my first directing class at BC – I found it to be freeing because I could really put myself up on that stage without physically putting myself up on that stage. And it was great. It was really that moment when I knew what I wanted to do with my life.

many reasons. It was the first show that I ever did that got noticed nationally and got this great press and notoriety in the Boston area, which was really good. But I think my biggest triumph was starting a theatre company and having it last 20 years and now we’re going into our 21st. Now that is an accomplishment - that it’s still here, and while it is mid-sized, you know, in terms of how you measure a theatre, it’s big. I’m sure it can’t be as easy as, ‘I just want to start a theater company,’ so how did that develop? I was a young director in New York City, living in New York City, and having a difficult time getting hired because I was so young. And I was getting some jobs, and I was doing a lot of training down there, having a good time. But I sort of just got frustrated. I just wanted to direct. So I came back to Boston because I knew it well, I went to school here, and I had lots of family here and started Speak Easy. And I had no idea what I was doing, I did not know what it would turn into today - I did not have a longterm plan, I really just started Speak Easy so I could direct. And then over time it became sort of an institution. I really started it for myself literally, but then it turned into a theatre company that does Boston premieres, shows that have never been done in Boston. That’s our mission. Our budget is over $100 million, and we hire about 200 artists a year, and it’s great. How does that feel, receiving the Monan professorship in the theater department? It’s only been around for four years. It feels pretty great. I mean, I’m the first alumni to get it, too, so that’s even better to me. You know, I think I’d give the BC theater department a lot of credit, because it’s so easy to get seduced by stardom and a big Hollywood name, which they have from this department. But they look after the best interests of the students, and the fact that they approached me, somebody local who isn’t nationally well known but has a career – I’m here for the right reasons, I think. Partially, that I directed two shows here already and kept my ties with BC made it easier for the whole thing to happen. But yeah, it’s great. It’s just at the beginning of it. I’m going into the big tech weekend, so we’ll see how that goes. So far so great; it’s going really well. What do you see next, after the professorship? You know, continue teaching at the Boston Conservatory, I’m a full-time staff member there. Continue there and continue to work on growing Speak Easy’s capacity and directing new works.

And what was maybe your favorite project? Or do you have one? That’s interesting. That’s a good question.... Is it almost like kids, you can’t pick a favorite? It’s like kids in that I’ve had different benchmarks that I really love. Like, I directed this musical called Bad Boy the Musical in 2000. That was great for

What do you have to say to to potential audiences about the show? C o m e ! Pe o p l e wh o know the show will love it, will love the production. We’re sort of faithful to the show, and yet we have a very unique point of view. But people who don’t know the show will easily fall in love with it, and be startled, surprised, and happy about how these guys who wrote the show have woven all these fairytales together. You know, you see that all the time when they talk about the show, but what happens after happily ever after? But at the same time I don’t want people to think this is a big, heavy thing. There are serious moments but it’s done through humor.

courtesy of google.com

courtesy of Sean Murphy

THE CAST: EVAN MURPHY, A&S ’12, ALLISON RUSSELL, A&S ’12, AND ALEX LUCCI, A&S ’12 Into the Woods is one of the most challenging musicals to perform. What is your opinion of that statement and how did your find footing for you character? Sondheim’s music is extremely difficult to learn and memorize. I had no idea how intricate it truly was until I had to do it myself. Then on top of the music, you have incredibly rich characters, each with their own meaningful journey. To tell that story in a meaningful way, all while keeping the music and lightningfast blocking intact, can be a tall order for any actor. - E.M. In terms of stage management and coordinating what happens when on the stage, Into the Woods is extremely difficult. It is very technically heavy because of the special effects: animal puppets, climbing a tower with Rapunzel’s hair, Little Red Ridinghood being eaten by the Wolf, etc. It takes a lot of finesse to time everything to the music, particularly because Sondheim writes a lot of underscoring in the dialogue, so every cue on stage has to be synched to the music. - A.L. What has been the most enriching part of performing this work? Being a part of this show has opened my eyes to how amazing the story really is. Into the Woods seems like a fairy tale on the surface but it is a grippingly accurate portrayal of people taken out of their comfort zones and charged with completing a daunting task. We can all relate to this. It shows characters dealing with loss and trials and their own shortcomings. Working on this show has taught me a lot about myself, and how I would handle those situations. - E.M.

I think the success of Into the Woods lies in the collaboration of the cast. I have really enjoyed building an environment of trust with the cast and being able to take risks and rely on them to help and support me. We all believe in each other, and we work together at every rehearsal to ensure the show, as well as our individual performances within the show, are the best they can be. - A.R. What’s it like to work with Paul Daigneault? Paul is the best. He provides for us the perfect combination of support and drive; in other words, he compliments us on our work and pushes us to go even further with our characters. He grounds everything in reality and encourages us to explore and play with our roles, balancing artistic freedom with the telling of the story. He makes us want to be better. - A.R. Working with Paul has been fantastic. It has been great as a senior getting ready for professional theater to work with a professional director. The expectations are greater. I feel as though I’ve learned and grown a lot by always being on task and doing my best. - A.L. How do you personally connect to the material? The Baker is a man who was abandoned by his father at a young age and wants, more than anything, to provide his wife with a child so that he can have a family of his own. He strives to be independent and to fill in the gap that has been left in him. At every turn in the woods he is confronted with his own fears. Sometimes running away looks a lot easier than facing them. He is definitely someone I relate to. - E.M. I find the Witch to be one of the most exciting parts I have played in a long time. She shows a really interest-

ing range of emotions, from a hilarious rap at the beginning to a deeply moving ballad about the loss of her child towards the end. I can connect to her because I often use humor to connect with other people, but I know what it is like to lose people that I love and have trouble expressing those emotions. I often wish for things that are out of my control, so the Witch’s mantra that “sometimes the things you most wish for are not to be touched” really resonates with me. - A.R. For someone who doesn’t normally attend BC productions, why should they attend this one? They should attend this one because not only is it the 30th Anniversary of Robsham, but it is also one of the most visually and musically stunning pieces we’ve done in a while. The actors shine, since material is first-rate, because it’s Stephen Sondheim and the design elements are all exquisite to look at on stage. - A.L. I think people should attend Into the Woods because everyone knows the fairy tales around which the plot line of this show is based. The show is interesting, funny, and touching, and there are lots of lessons that can be taken from it. Furthermore, it challenges the audience to examine their own longing and recognize that relationships are worth more than anything else. - A.R. There is a buzz about this show and it’s for a reason. The theater department is basically pulling out all the stops. You’ve got a titan in Paul Daigneault as director, the genius Joe Delgado behind the piano, and a dream team of designers making this show look and sound and feel Broadway level. You cannot see a show this good anywhere for a price this cheap. Do yourself a favor and come get lost in the woods. - E.M. n

SPORTS The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Arnold sends BC home with win By Steven Principi Heights Staff

Great teams find a way to win, even on their worst days. The Eagles did not play their best game of the season Saturday at Northeastern but managed to overcome a two-goal deficit to beat the Huskies 4-3 in overtime. Bill Arnold scored the game-winner on a brilliant deflected shot with one minute left in the extra period to lift Boston College (5-1, 3-0 Hockey East) to another victory. Kevin Hayes added a goal for the second straight night and Barry Almeida and Brian Dumoulin chipped in third-period goals to overcome three Northeastern goals. “I thought the game really reflected our team well,” head coach Jerry York said. “We were down 3-1, the game was kind of slipping away from us, but we sustained our energy level even when the time was winding down. I was really impressed

by the level of play throughout the game.” For the second straight night, the Eagles jumped out to an early lead when Hayes took a wrist shot that beat Northeastern goalie Chris Rawlings up high at 1:55 in the first period. The goal came on BC’s very first shot of the game and gave Hayes goals in consecutive games. The Huskies, however, responded with two goals of their own before the period ended, including a great individual play by Joseph Manno (his first collegiate goal). Manno added another goal in the second period to extend the lead to 3-1. The score stayed the same until Almeida slid a puck past Rawlings at 8:04 in the third period. The senior winger picked up the puck and fought his way past two defenders right to the front of the net. He beat Rawlings through the five-hole, causing the BC bench to erupt in cheers. alex trautwig / heights editor

See Men’s Hockey, C3

Bill Arnold’s focus has paid dividends for the Eagles, as he has scored a team-leading five goals.

Catching a glimpse of BC’s potential

Snap Back To Reality After playing their best first half of the year, the Eagles succumb on the road to the Hokies, 30-14

Paul Sulzer

field position. On second-and-12, Chase Rettig evaded pressure, as he would all day, to find a wide open Colin Larmond, Jr., who advanced the ball down to the two yard line. On the next play, Rettig made a beautiful fake handoff to Deuce Finch and took the keeper in for two yards and the touchdown. “It was an encouraging first drive,” Rettig said. “Had a big play and then a rushing touchdown, and the defense is playing well.” After that, the BC defense forced another threeand-out, but the offense could not repeat another

Before things fell apart in the second half, Boston College teased its followers with a snapshot of the team the Eagles could be if they maximized their ability. Creative coaching and quality execution had BC poised to upset No. 16 Virginia Tech Saturday at Lane Stadium until the Eagles’ inability to adjust or consistently perform resurfaced. On their first drive of the game, the Eagles were brilliant. Sophomore Chase Rettig showed better pocket presence than at any other point in his two years at BC. He intelligently stepped up to avoid the pass rush on his first dropback, drawing the linebackers toward him before lofting the ball over them to Colin Larmond, Jr. for a 35-yard gain to the 2-yard line. Offensive coordinator Dave Brock then took a page out of Steve Logan’s playbook, calling a zone read, which Rettig kept for the first rushing touchdown of his career. Everyone in the stadium was speechless. Where had this BC team been all season? Rettig looked composed reading through his progression and knowing when to look downfield, checkdown to the flats, throw the ball away, or tuck and run. He refused to make questionable passes to his first target. He patiently let plays develop before choosing the best option. Not to be outdone, the defense put in a gritty performance against one of the best rushing attacks in the ACC. Luke Kuechly, Kevin Pierre-Louis, and Steele Divitto combined to hold tailback David Wilson to 21 yards in the first half. Wilson, who runs a 4.29 40 and averages over six yards a carry, kills teams with his speed when he gets to the sideline and his slipperiness when the defense gets a hand on him. The Eagles did well to keep him between the tackles and to wrap

See Football, C4

See Glimpse, C4

dan petersen/ ap photo

The Eagles were able to keep the Virginia Tech pass rush at bay for much of the first half. But pressure from the Hokies’ blitzers forced Chase Rettig into some mistakes in the second half. By Greg Joyce

Assoc. Sports Editor BLACKSBURG, Va. — The Boston College football team made a point of coming out of the locker room ready to play on SaturVirginia Tech 30 day at No. 16 Virginia Tech. Boston College 14 The Eagles just forgot to do the same in the second half. It was a tale of two halves for the Eagles, who got out to a 7-0 lead just 2:59 into the game and held a 7-6 lead at the half, before being outscored 24-7 in the second half to drop their sixth game of the season, 30-14.

“We’re trying to get ourselves mentally [ready]. We made a conscious effort to try and get ourselves in that frame of mind. It helped and you build on some of that confidence,” head coach Frank Spaziani said. “But we didn’t have that at halftime. We needed to come out with that in the second half also. We’ve got to get it. And we will get it, and they know it, and we know it. It’s our job to get it.” The first five minutes of the game could not have gone better for BC. The Hokies started with the ball, but they were forced to punt after three plays for nine yards. Michael Branthover shanked the ensuing punt, which went out of bounds at the Virginia Tech 37-yard line, giving the Eagles prime

BC Field Hockey Seniors And Grad Students

Women’s soccer

Beating ’Pack puts Eagles back on track By Raychel Kruper Heights Staff

When Kristie Mewis has the ball at her feet, magic happens. She races down the Boston College 1 left wing and 0 NC State sends a cross to Gibby Wagner, making a run at the back post. Wagner’s first touch brings down the pass. Her second is to Stephanie Wirth, and then it’s 1-0. One goal was all the Boston College women’s soccer team needed to overtake the NC State Wolfpack Sunday afternoon in Newton to break out of is four game losing slump, which started two weeks ago against Duke. “I try to evaluate [based on] the way we play and not indicative of the result,” head coach Alison Foley said. “Other than the Florida weekend, the 14 games we played some really good soccer. We keep reminding the team about that and to ‘keep your heads up, it’s going to come.’ We’re a good team and can’t be influenced by a play here or there. We have to believe in ourselves and believe in each other.”

See Women’s Soccer, C4

alex trautwig / heights editor

BC bounced back from a 3-2 OT loss to Syracuse on Friday’s Senior Night to beat Dartmouth.

2 4 20 21 24 30

Catherine O’Brien, M Canton, Mass.

Courtney Tavener, M/F Winchester, Mass. Anna Wetherall, F Greymouth, New Zealand

Carla Tamer, B Frankfurt, Germany

For The Heights

In the highest scoring game the Eagles have played all season, a hat trick from Boston Boston College 6 College forward 4 Dartmouth Anna Wetherall helped fend off a strong attack from Dartmouth in a 6-4 win on Sunday. The Big Green matched the highest goal tally allowed by the Eagles this year due to a hat trick from senior Kelly Hood, but it wasn’t enough thanks to a collaborative effort on the Eagle’s offensive front. The Eagles outshot Dart-

i nside S ports this issue

mouth 14-12 and had twice as many corners, with a 10-5 advantage. BC started off with an early goal in the first five minutes by Wetherall off a penalty corner. The Eagles are now 8-0 for the season when scoring before their opponent and 2-7 when they do not. Dartmouth quickly responded with a goal of its own, but Courtney Tavener and Sarah Hospodar continued the offensive onslaught, each finding the net for the Eagles as they took a 3-1 lead. Hospodar’s goal late in the opening half was the first of her collegiate career. BC began to pull away in the second

Deuce breaks loose

BC’s sophomore running back registered a career-high 145 total yards............C4

By Chris Marino Asst. Sports Editor

half after a goal from Carla Tamer set up by Jacqui Moorfield’s second assist marked the fourth different Eagle player to score, but back-to-back goals from Hood tied the game up at 4-4. Wetherall then completed her first hat trick as an Eagle by netting two unanswered goals in a three-minute span to put the Eagles up 6-4 with 10 minutes left. She knocked in one from the top of the circle and another off of an assist from sophomore Virgynia Muma. The BC defense stood strong for the rest of the half and goalkeeper Nicole Barry

The No. 18 Boston College men’s soccer team (11-4-0) hadn’t tied a game all season long. The Boston College 2 Eagles weren’t 1 Duke about to settle for one on Saturday night against Duke (7-6-1) in Newton. Tied 1-1 after one overtime period, Kyle Bekker streaked down midfield and fed a ball to fellow junior Charlie Rugg. Rugg outplayed his defender and hit the back of the net from 17 yards out to give the Eagles the doubleovertime victory, 2-1, and send the crowd into celebration. “No, that was nothing. It didn’t mean a thing,” head coach Ed Kelly said in jest. “That was an unbelievable game. What excitement. Oh my God. They had us in the first half, outplayed us. We made a few adjustments. The boys realized that maybe we were giving them a little too much respect. Their two forwards are a handful, so we were a little bit too conscious of that. It’s probably my fault. But again, [Andrew Wenger], who has 15 goals for them didn’t even have a sniff, so it was good. He’s a good player. Their goalkeeper’s a good player.”

See Field Hockey, C2

See Men’s Soccer, C5

Maike de Jager, B/M/F Amsterdam, Netherlands Nicole Barry, G Voorhees, N.J.

High-scoring Eagles defeat Big Green By Austin Tedesco

Rugg scores game-winner in overtime

Conor Fitzpatrick feature

The senior captain of the men’s soccer team has played a variety of roles over his four years............C5

Numbers to Know....................C2 Quote of the Week.....................C2

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

On Senior Night, BC drops heartbreaker By Sean Hyatt Heights Staff

No. 12 Boston College (9-7, 1-3 ACC) fell, 3-2, to No. 6 Syracuse (14-2, 4-0 Big East) in over3 Syracuse time on Friday in Boston College 2 Newton on Senior Night for the Eagles. Fittingly, the play of BC’s seniors kept the team in the game with a goal by Courtney Tavener, who was all over the field throughout the contest, and an assist from Carla Tamer, who consistantly made crucial tackles on the team’s defensive 30. Nicole Barry also put together an impressive game, tying her career best with eight saves on the night. “[The seniors] excelled,” head coach Ainslee Lamb said. “That’s what’s so incredible about BC. It’s just how much pride they have. You just saw that in them tonight—how important it is to them. How much they want that responsibility as seniors to lead this team and every one of them played incredibly well tonight. It was admirable. These six seniors have just continued to go after it.” The Eagles ended the match with seven shots to Syracuse’s 17 and allowed the Orange six penalty corners in the match. “A good tribute for our team is the ability to sustain that [shot differential],” Lamb said. “There was probably a six-minute period where we weren’t above our defensive 30. To be able to hold that is pretty exhausting

mentally and physically. But if you look at the 17 shots, they were all contested defensively, and they were all no-angle shots. We didn’t have anyone walk into the top of the circle and tee it up. So I’ll give them the 17. Whereas our [shots] were actually quite dangerous.” In the first half, the game went back and forth in a defensive stalemate with neither team finding the back of the net until the 33rd minute, when Syracuse finally opened up the scoring. In the middle of a full box, Jordan Page shot off a Heather Susek assist to give the Orange the lead at halftime. At the start of the second period, both teams failed to score despite several penalty corners. With 11 minutes left in the second half, BC earned a penalty cross, converting it into points with an assist from Carla Tamer and a shot into the upper left corner of the net by Anna Wetherall. It was her sixth goal of the season. Four minutes later, the Eagles put away another chance to gain the lead as Tavener took it in from outside the circle, beat out a defender, and took a cross-body, backhand shot to make it 2-1. “[Courtney] came in and took the reverse stick shot,” Lamb said. “I think what’s so incredible about Courtney is that she has worked so hard to get to the level that she’s at. It’s just so rewarding in coaching to see someone who has had that work ethic and that work rate be rewarded. That was an elite, top, All-American goal scored tonight.

That type of pressure and that type of skill, that’s where she is now because of her commitment over the last four years.” With just under five minutes left in play Syracuse pulled its goalie in an attempt to build the offensive pressure. Forty seconds later, the goalie decision found validation as Liz McInerney found Kelsey Millman inside the already-crowded circle. As she fell down, Millman’s shot alluded Barry to equalize the score, sending the game into seven-on-seven overtime. BC had several chances throughout the extra frame after starting a man up due to a late Syracuse yellow card in the second half. With 14 minutes left in the first period of overtime, Tavener took the ball from outside left of the circle through traffic to the center. With one clean move she passed the goalie—for a split second leaving her with a wide-open goal and potential walk-off shot—only to lose control and possession of the ball off a post-move stumble. The Syracuse game-winner came with a minute left in the overtime period. Leonie Geyer dribbled to the seven-yard marker and took a shot that launched off her stick and into the cage to yield the 3-2 final result. Although the strong performances by the Eagles’ seniors weren’t enough for the storybook win, they still have opportunities to shine with a game at Wake Forest and the ACC tournament lingering in the near future. n

alex trautwig / heights editor

The Eagles left it all on the field in Friday night’s loss, and came back with a big win Sunday.

Field hockey rebounds with win at Dartmouth Field Hockey, from C1 recorded her fifth save after nine shots on goal during the 10-minute span to seal the win. The Eagles now have a record of 10-7 and

the door to be one of 16 teams who qualify for the NCAA tournament remains open. One more regular season game at Wake Forest and the upcoming ACC tournament will provide opportunities for a rejuvenated offense to prove that they belong. n

alex trautwig / heights editor; and alex manta / heights photo illustration

Eagles take steps against Florida State, but overmatched in the end By Chris Grimaldi For The Heights

SPORTS in SHORT

With Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” blasting over the Power Gym sound system during one timeout, a de3 Florida State termined Boston Boston College 0 College volleyball team came into Sunday’s game against Florida State with its own revolutionary mindset: taking down the ACC’s elite. After a strong effort in a loss against highly ranked Miami only a couple days earlier, the Eagles’ valiant performance against the Seminoles came as no surprise. It would take three competitive sets for top-ranked FSU to ultimately silence a fired-up BC squad led by head coach Chris Campbell. “This [was] an opportunity to play against one of the top 10 teams in the country,” said Campbell, now in his second season at the helm. “This is the measuring stick of where we’re trying to get to as a program.” A 3-0 loss (26-24, 25-13, 25-19) in this David and Goliath match-up left BC to regroup after its 15th loss of the season. Though the Eagles displayed their characteristic cohesiveness on the court, Florida State’s dominant frontal attack proved to be an insurmountable obstacle on the path toward any potential upset. Campbell’s team was ultimately unable

to contain an FSU front line that included the likes of 6-foot-5 sophomore Elise Walch and 6-foot-2 senior Rachael Morgan, whose 13 kills were a season high. Even so, the Eagles proved to be a formidable opponent for a talented Florida State program that still boasts a perfect record within the ACC. After the Seminoles

Clemson Wake Forest Florida State NC State Maryland Boston College

Coastal

Virginia Tech Georgia Tech Miami Virginia Duke North Carolina

throughout Sunday’s matchup would soon tilt in the favor of FSU, whose own rampage of kills and blocks robbed set number one from the Eagles, setting the tone for a Seminole victory. Both of BC’s veteran captains, Higgins and Clark, carried out solid efforts through all three sets. Their persistent efforts to coun-

Graham Beck / heights staff

Kellie Barnum (15, left) contributed 33 assists, while Brennan Clark (11, right) collected a team-high 21 digs in the losing effort on Sunday.

ACC Football Standings Atlantic

jumped out to a quick 5-0 lead in the first set, Campbell’s decision to call an early timeout sparked a BC scoring run that gave the Eagles a 15-14 advantage. Solid play at the net from junior Krystle Higgins and digs by senior libero Brennan Clark saw BC build a sizeable lead well into the set. However, the seesaw of momentum and emotion present

Conference 5-0 4-1 2-2 1-2 1-3 0-4 3-1 3-2 2-2 1-2 1-2 1-3

Overall 8-0 5-2 4-3 4-3 2-5 1-6 7-1 6-2 4-3 4-3 3-4 5-3

Numbers to Know

1.6

Seconds remaining on the clock when Emily Field scored the game-winning goal for the women’s hockey team Sunday.

Consecutive wins over UMass for the men’s hockey team, dating back to 2008.

21 / 113

The football team gave up 21 rushing yards to Virginia Tech’s David Wilson in the first half, but 113 in the second.

ter FSU’s presence at the net and maintain effective ball movement temporarily kept the Eagles alive. By game’s end, Clark had collected three assists and an impressive 21 digs. Commenting on the growth and consistency of his team’s senior captain, Campbell said, “[Clark] has risen to the challenge this year. There’s room for her to grow and continue to improve, but she’s competing as one of the top liberos in the conference.” Sophomore Kellie Barnum also contributed with a team-high 33 assists in the losing effort. Despite the loss, Campbell recognized that staying competitive with teams in what has “evolved into one of the top volleyball conferences in the nation” is a huge step for the squad’s rebuilding process. “For us, it’s an experience of the level of play and consistency that you have to have to be successful.” Turning well-played matches against topranked teams into victories is the next step that the Eagles look to take on their road to contention. With a talented core of athletes and an intelligent coaching staff, a little more consistency may be all BC needs to assert itself as a force to be reckoned with in the ACC. If a conference championship is a part of the Eagles’ promising future, then players and fans can tolerate growing pains. n

Quote of the Week

“That was an unbelievable game. What excitement. Oh my God. It’s huge. It’s NCAA time. That was an NCAA win.”

— Head coach Ed Kelly, on men’s soccer’s 2-1 OT win over Duke on Saturday

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Eagles escape NU, remain undefeated in Hockey East Men’s Hockey, from C1 “That goal put us right back in the game,” York said. “Almeida played a very strong and competitive game. That was a great play by him coming across. We had a lot more energy after he made it 3-2.” Just minutes later, Dumoulin cut to the net and jammed the puck home to tie the game at 11:09 in the third. While both teams traded chances for the next nine minutes, neither could find a winner in regulation. But when the game went to overtime, Arnold stepped up. Patch Alber wristed a shot from the point, which Arnold deflected from the slot. Rawlings wasn’t able to react quickly enough and the puck found its way into the net, giving BC the win. Arnold’s goal gave him three for the weekend and five for the season. “The line before us had a really good shift and we managed to keep the puck

Catch up on the weekend in hockey

down in their end,” Arnold said. “Kevin [Hayes] threw the puck out to Patch at the point. We talk a lot about going hard to the net and being strong out front, so I went out there. Patch got the puck out there and I was able to get a stick on it.” The Eagles did lose a key member of their team during a scary incident in the second period. Patrick Wey suffered a severed tendon in his foot when a blade cut through the tongue of his skate. “Pat’s been a really good player for us so far this year,” York said. “We’re hoping he can get the tendon sewn back tonight. He got taken to the hospital, but we’ll probably be without him for six or seven weeks.” Wey had asserted himself as a top four defenseman and was a key member of the penalty kill. Freshman Mark Begert will replace him in the upcoming games. n

Nick rellas / heights staff

Boston College played too much hockey, men’s and women’s, for us to fit all the action in the print edition of The Heights. For full coverage from Kelley Rink, check out our new blog, http://heightssports.tumblr.com.

alex trautwig / heights editor

Kevin Hayes scored a goal in both games of Boston College’s two Hockey East match-ups.

BC caps stunning rally with late winner By Matt Ulrich For The Heights

As the Boston College women’s hockey team prepared to face the Dartmouth Big Green, the Eagles Boston College 4 may have under3 Dartmouth estimated their opponents. The Big Green, although playing their first game of the season, started extremely strong against the Eagles, leaving a huge hole on the scoreboard for BC to overcome. Somehow, through a sea of people, the puck found the net. The scoreboard read Dartmouth 3, BC 0. Although there were still five minutes left in the first period, the Eagles’ skaters looked demoralized and defeated. Then the comeback began. The first goal came on a rebound late in the first period, followed by two terrific goals by Alex Carpenter in the second. Still tied 3-3 in the last minute of the third period, Emily Field scored on a rebound off a Carpenter shot with less than two seconds remaining in the game. The crowd went wild and the Eagles’ skaters were in a state of shock and ecstasy,

as they won, 4-3. “[Resiliency] is extremely valuable,” head coach Katie King said. “I was really proud of our kids and the way they came back. Being down three goals is a tough thing to come back from.” As King said, the Eagles’ resiliency, confirmed in the win against Dartmouth, will prove to be one quality that simply cannot be taught and is absolutely vital for any championship team. This is especially true for the NCAA tournament, where a single loss eliminates a team from title contention and a superior team without resiliency can easily lose after a slow start. Two players that were absolutely crucial to the Eagles’ comeback on Sunday were goaltender Corinne Boyles and Carpenter. After letting up three goals in the first 10 shots, the junior netminder was impenetrable, saving every shot that she faced. Boyles came up with many crucial saves in the third period during two Dartmouth power plays, singlehandedly giving her team a chance to win the game with a late goal. Carpenter, only a freshman, showed that she was one of the Eagles’ best young play-

ers by beating the Dartmouth goalie first in a one-on-one and then with a slap shot in the second period. She also provided the shot that resulted in a rebound and the key Eagles goal in the last minute of the game. When asked about Carpenter, King said, “We needed some goals and she found a way to get some. Her whole line was able to capitalize when we needed them. Alex is a great player and she’s doing a great job for us.” Carpenter, who now leads the team in points after the win against Dartmouth, has obviously found praise from King in the little time she has been with the team. Look for Carpenter to anchor the Eagles’ second line and be the team’s star of the future. With BC’s resiliency established, now the Eagles must work on starting strong and playing a full 60 minutes of hockey, as such a comeback cannot be expected every game. “[Starting strong] is something that I really want to work on,” King said. “Next weekend is all league play with Providence and Maine. We’ve got to be ready to go as soon as we hit the ice with both those teams.” n

alex trautwig / heights editor

Freshman Johnny Gaudreau scored a highlight-reel goal against an overwhelmed UMass team.

Men’s hockey extends win streak against UMass to 12 By Steven Principi Heights Staff

nick rellas / heights staff

Freshman Alex Carpenter scored two goals for BC and assisted on classmate Emily Field’s game-winner with 1.6 seconds left in the game.

Bill Arnold scored two goals, Chris Kreider added a goal and an assist, and Parker Milner made 18 saves to lead the Boston College hockey team to a 4-2 win Friday night against UMass at Kelley Rink. Johnny Gaudreau had a highlight-reel goal in the win as well. Arnold’s first goal got the game started right for the Eagles, coming just 1:18 into the first period. While Arnold got the goal, the credit for the play goes mostly to his linemates Kreider and Kevin Hayes, who set the play up beautifully. “That was just a really nice play by my two linemates,” Arnold said. “Chris drove really hard to the net, which gave Kevin time to find him. Chris probably could have shot that and scored, but he found me at the backdoor. That’s one of the easiest goals you’re ever going to get. I really owe it all to them.” After UMass scored off a strange bounce and Kreider buried a rebound, Arnold struck again. At 17:01 of the second, he took a pass from Brian Dumoulin and sniped the puck over goalie Jeff Teglia’s glove. “We had a good cycle going, everyone was working hard to move the puck,” Arnold said, “It eventually went out to Brian Dumoulin at the point and I started going towards the net. He threw it down and I picked it up and just tried to get it on net.” The play of the night, however, belonged to Gaudreau. From behind the net, Gaudreau performed a series of dekes that left Teglia completely confused. Teglia made a move to cover one post while Gaudreau was still handling the puck behind the net. With Teglia out of position,

he simply wrapped the puck into the open net and the stadium erupted. Head coach Jerry York was particularly impressed with the play, and praised Gaudreau for his performance up to this point of the season. “He’s so quick with his hands,” York said. “He’s improving each week for us too. He’s really learning the pace of the Hockey East game. I do still think the upperclassmen are our leaders this year, but we do have a very good group of freshmen as well.” The point both York and Arnold stressed, however, was the penalty kill. The Minutemen had a startling seven power plays but were unable to score on any of them. In fact, after taking four shots on their first power play, they were unable to get a single puck on net during their final six attempts. The team’s shorthanded play was a major reason that the Eagles left their home ice with a victory. “We do a lot of work during practice on the PK,” Arnold said. “I think the hard work we do there helps a lot during the game. Everyone is prepared and knows what to do. We’ve got four lines that we can roll out shorthanded, so we can keep everyone fresh and put a lot of pressure on them as well.” Despite the win, York remains focused on improving and moving forward every week. He made sure to stress that while the win was nice, the season is a long way from over and a lot can happen. “There’s a few things we need to do a little differently out there,” York said. “We’ve got a streak of nine straight Hockey East games right now, so we’re right in the thick if it. It’s a good challenge to have, and based on tonight’s game, our opponents are going to give us their best shot. We need to bring it every night.” n

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Tough second half brings BC back to reality Football, from C1 touchdown drive until the fourth quarter. The defense remained stout through the first half, limiting Virginia Tech to just six points on two field goals. The Eagles also made a point to hold the Hokies’ major threat, David Wilson, to just 21 yards on six carries. Meanwhile, the offense had trouble sustaining drives once it got past the 50yard line. Rettig was able to convert on some big third downs: a 27-yard pass to Finch on third-and-nine, a 19-yard pass to Larmond, Jr. on third-and-seven, a 21yard screen pass to Finch on third-and18, and a 19-yard pass to Chris Pantale on third-and-nine. “I thought we were converting third downs,” Rettig said. “Once we got past the 50 in the first quarter, I’m not going to say we stalled, but we missed opportunities. I think we had two drives in the first half once we got to the 50 that kind of stalled. That’s unfortunate.” “We played well,” Finch said. “We just have to finish when we get the ball on their side of the 50. We have to get points – three or seven, preferably seven – whenever we’re on the other side of the 50.” In the third quarter, though, Wilson was unleashed and the BC secondary fell apart. Virginia Tech quarterback Logan Thomas picked apart BC’s Cover 2 defense for some big passes. “We gave up a couple big plays,” Spaziani said. “One is an assignment error on our part, and the other one we just didn’t make the play. I’m not sure. You put a young man in a position, he’s got to make a play. It’s the same stuff that happens to you over and over. We didn’t play very good defense in the second half. “Two big plays and then things get rolling a little bit and you get a little air out of the balloon.” By the end of the third quarter, the Hokies held the 20-7 lead, and just over a minute into the fourth, they extended their lead to 27-7. The Eagles showed resiliency on a 11play, 72-yard touchdown drive capped off by a Rettig touchdown pass to Pantale on fourth-and-six at the 7-yard line, which made it 27-14 with just over nine minutes remaining. But the BC defense could not make a stop when it needed to, as it let Virginia Tech run down the field before kicking a field goal to put the game away at 30-14. Though his stat line would not indicate it, Rettig had one of the better games of his season, thanks to his ability to avoid pressure, scramble out of the pocket, and still find the open man downfield. “That’s just something I guess I’ve gotten better at since I’ve been here, just being able to make a play when you’re not protected and keep your eyes downfield,” Rettig said. “[Rettig] did make some nice plays early, and later on he did make some nice plays,” Spaziani said. “But there was a lot of pressure on him. When you’re going back there and people are in your face right away, it’s not good. We certainly need to protect him better.” Though the end result was the same as it has been in every ACC contest thus far, BC did show signs of improvement throughout the game. But at the end of the day, the Eagles know it’s still not enough. “It’s frustrating,” linebacker Luke Kuechly said. “We played well on defense and on offense in different parts of the game. For us, a theme from this year is that we’ve got to play a complete game.” “I can’t be negative,” Spaziani said. “There’s positive stuff going on there. But we need to win games. There are a couple things that we need to do to get across the line, and we’re just not doing them right now. It’s encouraging that we’re getting better, but we need to get better faster, and more consistently.” n

Matt gentry / ap photo

Wilson broke BC’s back with a 42-yard touchdown run in the third quarter. After limiting him to 21 first-half yards, BC failed to keep him between the tackles or wrap him up when he was within reach.

First half offered glimpse of Boston College’s true potential Glimpse, from C1 him up when he was within their grasp. They limited him to 3.5 yards per rush, discouraging the Hokies from utilizing their best player. In doing so, BC took Virginia Tech out of its game plan. The Eagles forced Logan Thomas to drop back and pass, which is not his strength. Credit defensive coordinator Bill McGovern for dialing up inspired blitz packages in the first half. That pressure made Thomas erratic through the air. Even though the Eagles failed to create turnovers, they succeeded in throwing off the sophomore quarterback’s rhythm. BC

could seemingly do no wrong. After their best first half of the season, the Eagles were unable to recapture that magic over the final two quarters. Something was amiss from the beginning. Rettig was shaky on his first three throws of the half, which all fell incomplete. He missed open targets and forced passes into double coverage with the pass rush baring down. The Hokies’ pressure reached Rettig when the Eagles were rallying late in the third. On a play action from the Tech 22, the sophomore quarterback threw the ball while he was getting hit. His pass lacked the usual zip, though, and linebacker Tariq Edwards intercepted it before it could

reach Lars Anderson. That mistake was one of many BC made on Tech’s side of the field. Just as Rettig reverted to bad habits, so too did the defense. When Virginia Tech attacked the edge with bubble screens to capitalize on BC’s soft zone coverage, the Eagles had no answer. The Hokies victimized the BC secondary on a screen to receiver D.J. Coale, who used a teammate already engaged in a block to separate himself from a poorly positioned Spenser Rositano on a 30-yard gain. Despite the discouraging second-half performance, the Eagles established their rushing attack for the second straight

game. Deuce Finch ran for 92 yards and is averaging 4.6 yards per carry as the lead back Still, moral victories don’t count. The Eagles may be getting closer to winning their first game against an FBS opponent, but they aren’t there yet. Although winning typically cures all ills, BC’s problems go beyond anything a single victory can fix. Remember that when looking back on this season, regardless of what happens from here on out.

Paul Sulzer is the Sports Editor for The Heights. He can be reached at sports@ bcheights.com.

Football Notebook: Deuce breaks loose as lead running back By Paul Sulzer Sports Editor

When Virginia Tech seized momentum from Boston College early in the third quarter of Saturday’s 30-14 Hokies win, the Eagles turned to an unlikely option to get them back on track. They turned to a running back who was fourth on the depth chart a month ago: Deuce Finch. The 5-foot-10, 209-pound sophomore burst through the Virginia Tech front seven for eight, nine, and five yards on his first three runs of the half, at a time when the Eagles needed to establish the ground game to keep the pressure off quarterback Chase Rettig. “Early on, they were stacking the box to stop the run,” Finch said. “In the second half, we adjusted and took advantage of what we saw.” Behind an interior line that opened gaping holes that drive by generating significant push, Finch bulldozed forward with the powerful, direct style that makes him unique among BC’s backs. He also made himself available to Rettig as a target in the flats when the sophomore quarterback needed somewhere to unload the ball. “First of all, Deuce has ability and vision,” head coach Frank Spaziani said. “So he’s got that going for him. Deuce is at a position where there’s a lot of competition. He’s hungry. He didn’t like his situation, so he’s pushing himself and he’s working. We’re happy that he’s doing it.” Finch finished with his best numbers in a BC uniform: 18 carries, 92 rush yards, three catches, and 53 receiving yards. He had caught two passes in nine career games

Dan Petersen / ap photo

dan petersen / ap photo

Spaziani (left) called Finch’s number on the ground and through the air. In the opposing backfiled, Wilson (4, right) awoke after a quiet first half. before Saturday. “Deuce can catch the ball, he can run,” Spaziani said. “He’s overcome a lot to get to where he’s at. He’s certainly by no means polished in any way because he hasn’t played enough. But he can only get better and he’s shown me a lot. We all can learn from a lot from Deuce. Hopefully it will be contagious.” Wilson runs rampant Finch’s counterpart at tailback, David Wilson, exploded in the second half after a quiet first two quarters. The Eagles held the nation’s fifth-leading rusher in yards per carry (6.1) to 21 yards on six runs by denying him the edge and wrapping him up. But, in the second half, that changed. The Hokies went to their strength – the ground game – after throwing 25 passes in

the first half. Four of their first five plays in the third quarter were rushes, including a backbreaking option that Wilson took 42 yards for a touchdown. Quarterback Logan Thomas sidestepped BC linebacker Steele Divitto before tossing a long pitch to Wilson, who reached the sideline and showed off his track and field All-American speed. He broke a last-gasp diving tackle attempt by Jim Noel at the 5-yard line before falling into the end zone. “He’s fast,” linebacker Luke Kuechly said. “Everyone’s like, ‘David Wilson, he was the backup to Ryan Williams and Darren Evans.’ But he’s a player. He’s a time bomb. It’s only a matter of time before you know he’s going to hit [a seam].” Extra points True freshman cornerback Manny

Asprilla totaled eight tackles in his most significant playing time of the season. His run support from boundary corner helped limit Wilson in the first half. He acquitted himself in coverage, too, keeping his man in check and registering a pass breakup. Noel, the starter at boundary corner, left the game with an apparent knee injury after another player rolled on his left leg late in the fourth quarter. He did not return. Defensive lineman/fullback Dan Williams also left the game with a leg injury on Virginia Tech’s final drive. He was walking with crutches after the game. The Eagles have scored 14 points in each of their three most recent visits to Lane Stadium: 2007 (a 14-10 win), 2009 (a 48-14 defeat), and 2011 (Saturday’s 30-14 loss). n

Victory over ’Pack gets BC back on track Women’s Soccer, from C1

graham beck / heights staff

Gibby Wagner provided the assist on Stephanie Wirth’s goal with a clever pass in the box.

The Eagles came out believing in a much-needed victory. Although the team was a bit sluggish after its Thursday-night contest against North Carolina, BC undoubtedly outperformed the Wolfpack. Offensively, the Eagles maintained possession and created many attacking opportunities, while in the back, the Wolfpack had trouble getting past the Eagles’ defense and into prime real estate. Wirth struck gold at 14:37 in the first half, and though this was the only goal of the game, there were many close calls. Of the Eagles’ 15 total shots, nine of them were on goal, as opposed to the two with which the Wolfpack tested Jillian Mastroianni. “We had some good opportunities in and around the goal today,” Foley said. “Kristie had a great day. She changed the point of attack really well for us and opened the game for us left to right.” As the second half started, Mewis

sparked the Eagles’ forward push. Following a goal kick from Casey Morrison that was flicked on in the midfield, Mewis had a breakaway before NC State’s Randi Soldat took her down. Soldat awarded a yellow card for stopping a sure chance at goal. Vicki DiMartino stepped up to take the penalty kick and picked her spot. The lefty chose the bottom right corner. Unfortunately for the Eagles, so did the Wolfpack goaltender Kim Kern, who sniped DiMartino’s shot with a fully-extended dive. “It was unfortunate when Vicki missed that PK,” Foley said. “You know you really want to take the total pressure off the team but I think we certainly had some good build ups. We got in and around the box often.” The change in energy in the last few minutes of play was palpable as the Eagles fought to hold off the Wolfpack, who, with nothing to lose, pushed numbers up, including their goalkeeper. NC State was awarded two corner kicks in the last

three minutes of play, but Mastroianni came up with a big punching save as the clock wound down, securing the Eagles’ long-awaited victory. “It was an important game,” Foley said. “We had four tight, tight losses and it was important to give enough focus to get a win. It was a game, to summarize it, where we did what we needed to do.” There’s no better time for the Eagles to re-establish their dominant nature, reenergize their confidence, and believe in their ability than before their last season game against the No. 3 Wake Forest Demon Deacons. “[Wake Forest] is a great game to have for your last game of the season,” Foley said. “You focus in on it and you [can] beat somebody that’s higher ranked than you. We really want to get 6-4 in the ACC to get a quarterfinal game at home. In terms of what you want, I don’t think you ever want an easy game at home. I think you want a big game at home for your last game, so it should be good.” n

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Fitzpatrick overcomes early-season injury to help lead Eagles By Andrew Klowkiw Heights Staff

Every successful team has one: a player whose contribution transcends the numbers that appear on the stat sheet. They have it. It is that intangible factor that cannot be measured or confined to one line in a box score. To fill this role takes not just the ability to do the little things, but also the selfless temperament that manifests itself in taking a back seat in the headlines to teammates. For the men’s soccer team, that player is senior captain Conor Fitzpatrick. To claim that Fitzpatrick plays one position would be an injustice to someone who has done so much more than start nearly every game his team has played (when he has been healthy) over his four-year career on the Heights. He is the ultimate do-it-all player for the Eagles, as his impressive record demonstrates. But to fully understand who Fitzpatrick is, consider the subtleties of what he brings to head coach Ed Kelly’s perennial contender.

When Fitzpatrick arrived on the Heights in fall of 2008, the Eagles featured 11 seniors, including future United States national team player Alejandro Bedoya. Unfazed, the freshman stepped right out of high school and into the Eagles’ everyday lineup, where he started all of the team’s 21 games that season in a pivotal central midfield role. “I was thrown right into the fire when I came here, coming from club soccer right into the ACC,” Fitzpatrick said. “Going down to Wake and Maryland when I was so young involved a pressure aspect that was pretty high. Being able to do that as a freshman was great for me as a player, and now it’s just another game. Because of that I can help the freshmen out, and tell them that at the end of the day, it’s just soccer.” Though he would finish with only one goal and one assist, Fitzpatrick had established himself as one of the brightest upand-coming midfielders in the ACC. His abilities to make the crucial pass before the assist, go toe-to-toe physically with some of the NCAA’s top pro prospects,

ALEX TRAUTWIG / heights editor

Despite missing the majority of the season, Fitzpatrick (8) will be relied upon in the postseason.

and provide a level head in a sometimes frantic game, saw him become a fixture in Kelly’s squad at center mid. Until he wasn’t. Coming into his sophomore year, the now-senior displayed once more that selfless attitude that had so endeared him to not only his coach and teammates, but also fans on the Heights as well. At the outset of the 2009 season, it was clear that Kelly had landed himself a special recruiting class. With big-time performers like Charlie Rugg, Kyle Bekker, and Colin Murphy joining an already stacked roster, an inevitable reshuffle ensued. Fitzpatrick saw himself slide back into defense, allowing the likes of Bekker, junior Karl Reddick, and others to step into the center of the pitch. The new defenseman took the change in stride, giving the Eagles a dangerous attacking dimension from their backline that left teams scrambling. Once again, Fitzpatrick was not complaining. “It was good, we had a lot of quality players on the team that year, so we were just trying to find the best place to put the best 11 players on the field,” Fitzpatrick said of the position change. “Looking back, I was put back there to help out the backline and I was able to have a little more comfort on the ball on the outside to make plays up the wing. Anything that helped out the team position-wise was good for everyone, so it didn’t matter too much to me.” Somewhat predictably, when Fitzpatrick was asked whom he idolizes the most at the professional level, he mentioned an individual known for his team-first demeanor, Liverpool FC and England captain, Steven Gerrard. Gerrard is one of the most beloved figures for each of the squads he captains, as he does it all, and then some, when an extra push is needed. His penchant for stepping up when everyone else is prone to shying away from the pressure of a big game situation has seen “Stevie G” become a bit of a cult figure. Fitzpatrick showed his inner Gerrard during his junior season, when he shuttled

ALEX TRAUTWIG / heights editor

Fitzpatrick’s versatility on the pitch has made him a valuable asset to head coach Ed Kelly. between defense and his old centermidfield spot while starting all 20 of the Eagles’ games. Like Gerrard does for club and country, Fitzpatrick stepped up to slot home three penalty kicks on his way to his best statistical season with five goals. His junior campaign also held what Fitzpatrick called his favorite moment as an Eagle. On a Friday evening at Newton Campus, he collected a bouncing ball with his team locked in a scoreless draw with Boston University. Fitzpatrick put his head down and rocketed the ball from more than 30 yards out over the head of the BU goalkeeper for the first score in a 4-0 victory, much like Gerrard has been known to do. In keeping with his impressive threeyear track record, expectations were high coming into Fitzpatrick’s senior season. However, the captain pulled up lame before he even got a chance to play a game. “It was a torn hamstring, it just happened in preseason about three days in when we were doing some fitness,” Fitzpatrick said of the injury. “It was tough, especially right after it happened. The first couple of days, being that it is my senior

year, I was pretty bummed out, but I was able to step back from the situation and put it in perspective.” Fitzpatrick experienced the first nine games of this fall from an unfamiliar place: the bench. These marked the first nine games in his college career that the senior missed, but like always, the leadby-example captain remained unfailingly positive. “I realized it could definitely have been a lot worse,” he said. “It is what it is, and you’ve got to make the best of every situation. I was able to pick up on a lot of things on the sidelines, things that you don’t really pick up on while you’re in the game.” Through six games, the captain hasn’t experienced recurring problems with the hamstring. Saturday’s 2-1 victory over Duke in double overtime for Kelly’s team served as a further confirmation that the Fitzpatrick of old is indeed back. Though the talismanic senior’s name may have been listed below the likes of Rugg and Bekker on the score sheet, the Eagles and Fitzpatrick must be sleeping better at night knowing that they did pick up one of Fitzpatrick’s favorite stats: the win. n

Women’s soccer falls to North Carolina By Raychel Kruper Heights Staff

Despite the best efforts of a huge crowd in Newton to rally Boston College to vicNorth Carolina 1 tory Thursday Boston College 0 night, the Eagles fell 1-0 in a heartbreaker against ACC foe North Carolina. The Tar Heels scored the only goal of the game 23 minutes into the second half after Rachel Wood headed the ball along to a wide-open Kealia Ohai. Ohai easily buried the shot inside the far post as the BC bench argued for an offsides call. Head coach Alison Foley dismissed the idea that a bad call by the referee was to blame for the loss. “We had one mistake,” she said. “Our defenders got pulled over to the strong side and we left [Ohai] wide open,” Foley said. “Most players will convert that play in that situation.” The E agle s were plag ue d by missed opportunities. Sophomore midfielder Gibby Wagner set up two great scoring chances for freshman forward Stephanie McCaffrey toward the end of the first half, but both shots were off the mark. The second half opened with perhaps the best opportunity the Eagles had all night, as Kristen Mewis’ header off a free kick from Casey Morrison was tipped off the cross bar by North Carolina goalkeeper Anna Sieloff.

Mewis had two more opportunities late in the second half, but both sailed over the crossbar. Foley was pleased with the number of chances the Eagles had but disappointed by the final result. “It’s a game of chances,” Foley said. “There were two great teams out here tonight. The difference was one team converted their chance and the other didn’t.” The loss was the fourth straight for the Eagles, who have not been spectacular in ACC play. With regular season conference title hopes out of sight, BC must look to resurge in postseason play. Despite the recent slide, Foley is encouraged by the way the Eagles have been playing. “I evaluate things differently,” Foley said. “I look at the way we play more than I look at the results. I was pleased with the way we played today even though we lost. We beat Maryland and Virginia Tech and I wasn’t pleased with the way we played then.” Foley was also pleased with the play of Wagner, who created several opportunities and drew a lot of attention from the North Carolina defense in the second half. Foley was also impressed with the play from the defense. “We did a lot of things really well today,” Foley said. “Gibby Wagner played the best game of her career tonight. We played really well defen-

sively except for that one mistake.” Although it appears the Eagles have started to slide right before tournament time, Foley is quick to point out that the Eagles had the same exact record at this point last season. She and the team realize that the ACC is the toughest conference in women’s soccer, and the Eagles’ recent record does not reflect how well the Eagles have been playing against very strong competition. Foley made it clear that her team is not intimidated by the strong competition of the ACC. “We’re past the point of getting intimidated,” Foley said. “After last year, we’re over that hump. We know we can compete with anyone.” With the end of the regular season near, the Eagles still have time to regain some confidence before the start of tournament play. The Eagles have had strong performances against some of the best teams in the country. With the memory of last year’s College Cup appearance fresh in their minds, the Eagles are still confident they will reach their goal of the program’s first national title. From this loss, Foley and her team understand what it takes to be a national threat and beat the top teams in the country. The goal will be overcoming mental mistakes and consistently playing the full 90 minutes. If not completed, the Eagles will be disappointed this postseason. n

Graham Beck/ heights staff

Junior Kristen Mewis nearly scored on several occasions, but her attempts came up short. The Eagles will look for her to continue creating opportunities.

Graham Beck/ heights staff

Charlie Rugg’s goal in the second overtime capped an impressive comeback victory for the Eagles.

Eagles survive OT thriller Soccer, from C1 The Eagles started the game slowly and were down 1-0 early. Chris TweedKent, a Pittsfield, Mass. native, put the Blue Devils up at the 18:47 mark. The senior set himself at the left side of the box and booted a low liner just past the reach of a diving Justin Luthy. He was assisted on the play by midfielder Nick Palodichuk. From that point forward, the Eagles picked up their play, putting pressure on Duke goalkeeper James Belshaw. They had two big chances in the half. One came off the foot of Kevin Mejia, who broke away down the left side of the field, just past the 23-minute mark. As he entered the box, he rocketed a shot near post, but he missed just wide. The second opportunity came when senior captain Conor Fitzpatrick took a clean shot from the top of the box. Despite the effort, Belshaw knocked it out. Although the team was unable to get on the board, Luthy stepped up against the fast-paced Blue Devil offense, and made several huge saves down the stretch. At the end of the half, the junior had three saves. Despite play picking up at the end of the half, the home squad needed an offensive spark to end the deficit. The Eagles found that spark in the form of freshman Diego Medina-Mendez at 76:34. After a shot deflected off Belshaw, several players dashed to find the rebound. However, it was Medina-Mendez who caught it eight yards out and sent it to the top of the net. It was the freshman’s fifth goal of the season and tied the match at one. From that point forward, neither side was able to create any true scoring opportunities, due in large part to several sloppy fouls. With time winding down, the Eagles had the closest chances to break away. Medina-Mendez was almost the hero once more when he collected a pass at the left side of the box and tried to shoot across his body. He slid while taking the shot, giving Belshaw the chance to

set up for the save, and was unable to take advantage of the open space. The second chance came when Mejia streaked down the right side of the field and ripped a shot on net. Belshaw, once again, made a strong read on the low shot and blocked it to his left. The teams ended the period nearly matched statistically, but it was BC that had the bigger effect. Although Duke outshot BC seven to six, the home team at three shots on net. The Blue Devils only forced Luthy to make one save. Heading into the first overtime period, BC looked to carry its second half momentum and finish the Blue Devils early. The visitors had different plans, however, and matched the Eagles well. Each team had one shot for the period, and Luthy was only forced to make one save. The same was true for the second overtime period. As time wound down, the tension rose, leaving the BC faithful holding their collective breath. Duke nearly came away with the victory when Tweed-Kent took a shot in the middle of the box. The Blue Devil was alone and had the angle, but Luthy dove to his left and knocked the shot out just in time. The Eagles followed with the game-winning goal, less than three minutes before the end of play. “Luthy made a fantastic save,” Kelly said of the second overtime. “Oh my God. We worked very hard in the second half. They got us in the first half. It was a tale of two halves and all that sort of stuff, but what a great finish. Great pass by Bekk to his buddy, and he took the nice touch and slotted it home.” Kelly’s team realizes the importance of this ACC victory and will look to continue its strong, full-game play into the postseason. “This was a huge win when you consider the whole new format in the ACC and what it means as far as home-field advantage,” he said. “Now we go into UVa with confidence. We’re 11-4. It’s huge. It’s NCAA time. That was an NCAA win.” n

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

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“It’s almost like it was his My Little Hipster moment.” Directions: The Sudoku is played over a 9x9 grid. In each row there are 9 slots, some of which are empty and need to be filled. Each row, column and 3x3 box should contain the numbers 1 to 9. You must follow these rules: · Number can appear only once in each row · Number can appear only once in each column · Number can appear only once in each 3x3 box · The number should appear only once on row, column or area.

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The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

features The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

By Brooke Schneider Asst. Features Editor

This is the first in a two part series about the cost of a college education and how Boston College aims to promote financial literacy among the student body.

mollie kolosky \ heights Graphic

i nside FE ATURES this issue

Student Realtors

It is three weeks into September, all of the Boston College students think that everything is going well, classes aren’t too demanding and the dining hall food hasn’t grown too monotonous yet – and then they get the email. Looks like someone forgot to submit the form to waive the University-sponsored medical insurance, and now their student account is being charged. This scenario is all too common, says Chris Cordella, bursar and director of Student Operations. “It means BC would have to eat the cost because [the insurance company is] not going to send the money back to us because they’ve insured the student for the last eight weeks,” he says. “And so it becomes troublesome for us. But that’s information that we try to get out to the students all the time.” Medical insurance is just one of the fees that students can mitigate, which does not cover all costs of student life. In addition to tuition, there is the mandatory Student Activity fee, the Campus Health fee, which can be waived by students living off campus, and Residence Hall fees, which apply to students living on campus. Furthermore, all freshmen are charged a mandatory Freshman Orientation fee. These fees are clearly listed on the student bill, but there are many more costs of a college education that often go unrecognized. Not all classes are made equal, and many classes, namely in the sciences, the fine arts, and the nursing program come with a corequisite of a lab fee. For example, one of the courses required for undergraduates in the Connell School of Nursing (CSON), NU121 Nursing Health Assessment Across the Life Span Clinical Laboratory, requires a $225 lab fee. CSON Dean Susan Gennaro says that lab courses do have additional costs that other courses do not, such as paying for the use of computerized mannequins to simulate human behavior ranging from childbirth to death. These mannequins are $250,000 each and must be replaced every five years. “They’re really important pieces of equipment to have because you’d rather be doing some things like have the first patient that’s dropping dead be somebody that you can’t harm in any way,” she says. These additional lab fees should not deter students from pursuing certain career paths, however. “If you’re meant to be a nurse, we’ll find a way,” Gennaro says. Andrea Kisiel, CSOM ’13, says that she knows of students that have opted not to pursue minors such as photography because they are naturally more expensive. Kisiel, who is pursuing a minor in studio art, says that a lot of her classes have lab fees or require the purchasing of art supplies. “Right now, I’m in an art class called Art and Alternative Media, and I don’t have Photoshop on my computer or a good photography camera,” she says. “I’m trying to save up money to buy Photoshop, the student edition, but even that is like $200, and I’ve been borrowing my friend’s camera.” Though these classes have presented her with some difficulty, Kisiel has been innovative in finding ways to deal with the additional costs. Alex Szigety, CSOM ’13, recently paid $18 to participate in the Littlefield Simulation, which was a requirement in Operations, a core class for students in the Carroll School of Management (CSOM). This fee, though it seems small in comparison to a nursing lab fee, is unavoidable and unbeknownst to many students prior to enrolling in the course. Regarding students being unaware of costs associated with their BC education, many are surprised when they learn that the residence halls, with the exception of freshman dorms, vary in price. “I think I was talking with some potential roommates and we discussed the possibility of living in either Voute or Gabelli and somebody said that we should try for a townhouse,” Kisiel says. “Then somebody else said, ‘Actually, I don’t think we should do that because it’s more expensive.’” Kisiel says that this conversation marked the first time she had heard of the difference among residence hall rates. The room and board costs for 2011-12 can be found at www.bc.edu/offices/reslife/lifeinhalls/residencehalls/prices. According to the website, two-bedroom townhouses in Voute or Gabelli cost $5,105 per semester, while six-mans in Ignacio and Rubenstein carry a smaller price tag of $4,545 per semester. Cordella explains the difference in prices by the inclusion of appliances and common room furniture, and good old supply and demand, especially when it comes to the Mods. “Housing, like dining services in a lot of regards, tries to be self-sufficient so they’re

Read about the lives of students who work in the business of real estate in their spare time...............................................................................................................D2

not trying to come off the tuition dollars in any way,” Cordella says. “So they try to make sure they’re covering their costs to keep up the dorms and to pay the residential assistants, all the RDs, and whoever else needs to be involved in the housing operation.” Housing is just one of many sectors of student life that does not utilize tuition dollars, and thus require fees of its own, or in this case, the cost of room and board. The meal plan also poses a large cost that can be avoidable for many students in their second, third, or fourth years. Since mandatory meal plans are only required for students living in dorms without a full kitchen, by choosing a dorm that does have a kitchen, students can avoid being charged $2,237 for the Residential Dining Plan and $125 in Residential Dining Bucks each semester. For example, by choosing to live in Edmond’s Hall as opposed to the Gate, students can avoid paying anything to dining services. “For a student who has the option in their second, third, or fourth years, they can save a lot of money by saying, ‘Well, I don’t need a mandatory meal plan,’” Cordella says. Depending on the shopping habits of the student, they can save a lot of money by cooking their own meals – and if need be, they can always supplement their home cooking with the purchase of a Flex plan. Another fee that can be avoidable for a certain population is the yearly $426 Campus Health fee, which allows students to visit the infirmary free of any additional charge. Though juniors that live off campus are charged for this fee, Cordella wants to ensure that those students understand they can waive it. If they do choose to waive the fee, they can be charged per visit to the infirmary, though Cordella cautions that such a method could become expensive. “They’ll never be denied service because they waived the plan, it’s just a matter of how they pay for it later on,” he says. For those living on campus, however, Cordella says the fee is mandatory partly because police want to be able to bring students to the infirmary in the event of an emergency occurring in the residence halls. If one glances at their student bill, the aforementioned fees are visibly outlined and so these expenses can be anticipated year after year. But what about the expenses that aren’t listed on the bill – traveling home for the holidays, winter coats, season football tickets, toilet paper, trash bags, birthday decorations, those lax pinnies that everyone on your floor is ordering, Plexapalooza tickets, and the accompanying neon spandex that must be purchased if you want to match your friends, and the Charlie Card that you use to travel to your internship? These costs are not specific to BC and they pose a problem for college students nationwide that oftentimes are paying for daily necessities out of their own pockets for the first time. Though he now has the fortune of having his own washing machine in his off-campus house, Szigety remembers when he had to first pay for laundry on Upper Campus. “I’ve never had to pay for laundry before, and you get here and you have to pay $1.50 for each washer and each dryer and that adds up,” he says. For everyone that wants to wear clean clothes each week, this $1.50 cost is as inescapable as tuition. Though attending ever y social event sponsored by BC is not essential, having fun in some capacity is necessary to lead a fulfilling college life. The University makes many efforts to offer free events on the weekends, sponsored by Nights on The Heights, but it also hosts events that cost a few hours’ wages from Hillside Cafe. Most recently, tickets for Plexapalooza were sold out after an eager student body paid $22 each to secure a spot on the Plex floor for one of BC’s biggest dance parties. The only way to purchase tickets, however, was online, which made the $2 service fee unavoidable. “I just went to Plexapalooza and you could only buy the tickets online and there’s a service fee online so there wasn’t even an option,” Kisiel says. “I mean, it was a $2 service fee, but still, it’s all those little things that add up.” The fact that all those little fees add up is enough to prevent many students from partaking in certain social activities – something that is made all the more frustrating when all of their friends go without them. “Especially with social events, I think that’s probably the most difficult because all your friends are going and you don’t want to say that you can’t afford it,” says Marsia Hill, senior financial aid associate. The University understands the strain that college life puts on students financially, and it aims to make sure that students are not alone in navigating what seems like a financial black hole. The assistance that BC provides for students by promoting financial literacy and the importance of budgeting will be explored in the second part of this series next week. Until then, stay sensible, BC. n

The Real World.................................D4 Campus Chronicles.........................D3

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

From one place to another: the transition of a BC transfer student By Kyra Sammis For The Heights

Picture this: It’s your first day at a new school. You’re excited, nervous, and probably filled with anticipation about the future. You look around and see a crowd of freshmen with the same look of mixed emotions on their faces. But as the freshmen head off to check out their new residences, you lag behind with only a few others. You may not be a freshman, but you’re definitely fresh. You’re the newbie, the “whois-that?” kid. You are a transfer student. At Boston College , about 1,000 transfer applications pass through the office of admissions every year. The percentage of applicants accepted varies annually, depending on the amount of students needed at BC to fill empty spots. For instance, in 2001, out of 1,015 applicants, 25 percent were accepted, while in 2008, 1,803 students applied to transfer and only 9 percent of these applicants were accepted. Over the past 10 years, 50 percent of accepted transfers actually enrolled at BC. The journey of a transfer student can be a daunting one, as the decision to go through the entire college admission process again can be exhausting. BC tries to cater to the needs of a student who may be looking for a different experience. Mary French is one of the directors of transfer admission in the Office of Undergraduate Admission. Along with fellow transfer admission officers, French participates in special information sessions for transfer students. These sessions run on one Friday a month from September to March and include information from the directors about transferring, as well as a panel session of current undergrad transfers who have gone through the process before. In addition to these Eagle Eye sessions, there is a wealth of information about all things related to transfer students on the BC website, which can be found in the Undergraduate Admissions section of the site. Although the Transfer Admission Office will send out information about transferring or a catalog to a student if requested, French admits the Office does not do a ton of outreach, as recruiting students

from other four-year colleges and universities is not ethical. Directors will visit some two-year institutions, but for the most part, it is up to the student to express his or her interest in transferring to BC. The transfer process is relatively straightforward and a detailed description of the procedure is listed on the website. In order to even submit a transfer application to BC, the applicant is required to have at least a 3.0 college GPA, although in recent years, the average GPA of admitted students has been a 3.6. Transfer students are required to submit the Transfer Common Application, including an essay, the BC supplemental application, transcripts from all college semesters, as well as an official high school transcript, SAT or ACT scores from students who are applying within five years of graduating from high school, and an instructor’s recommendation. In addition, transfers must also submit a college report, which is used to assess the citizenship and personal standing at all institutions the student has attended full-time. BC also requires a mid-term grade report form from its transfer applicants. Students are informed a few months later whether or not they have been accepted into BC as a transfer student. Students are sent an information packet with material about the student’s year ahead at BC. Unlike students who are admitted as freshmen, transfers do not have the opportunity to attend an Admitted Eagle Day. However, French reveals that there may be a similar event in the works for recently accepted transfers coming to campus on a Friday this coming spring. Although an accepted transfer student day is not currently an option for transfers to participate in, they do attend orientation like all new students over the summer. According to French, transfer students are strongly encouraged to attend the second to last orientation option, session six, in late July. Because they are at an orientation with upcoming freshmen, transfer students are placed in separate groups, exclusively for transfer students. This allows all new upperclassmen a chance to get to know each other and meet new people before arriving on campus with the entire student body in September.

Once a student has begun his or her school year, trying to get involved and meet people in a place where friendships have already been established can be tricky. French describes several different ways that transfer students can adjust more easily into their new lives at BC. First, there is a club at BC for transfer students, the Boston College Transfer Club, which participates in Welcome Week activities for transfers, as well as hosts an advising session for registering for classes. Upperclassmen in BCTC also serve as mentors to new transfers and help guide them through their first year as they navigate their way at this new institution. One of the more notable transfer student events is a dinner cosponsored by BCTC and the Office of the Dean of Student Development. This event brings transfers together to check in, see how they are enjoying their new school, and offer transfers any advice they may need. French says that admitted transfers also turn to her, as well as the other transfer admission officers, for advice, as students looking to transfer are in constant contact with Transfer Admission directors and create a personal connection with them. Although the website provides substantial information about different aspects of becoming a transfer student, only a true transfer can provide an inside look at what it is like when trying to become an Eagle. Three transfers offered their stories and experiences about transferring to BC. Please note that although all two of the interviewed students are in CSOM, most transfer students are admitted to the College of Arts and Sciences. Stephanie Armstrong, CSOM ‘14, transferred to BC this year from a school in the Southern Atlantic region of the United States. When looking to transfer, Armstrong was searching for a school closer to her home, which is in New Hampshire. “I had applied to BC as a freshman, and although I was accepted, I admittedly didn’t give BC much thought,” Armstrong says. “I’m a native New Englander, and I absolutely am in love with the city of Boston, so the second time around I knew I had to come here!” In addition to BC’s location, Armstrong was drawn to the well-rounded image the school presents, with “great academics,

lots of team spirit, and a really active student body.” Armstrong did express she has some issues with the housing of transfer students at BC, as Stephanie is housed with all other transfer students. Although she has made some great friends with the other transfers, she explains that living with other transfers can make it difficult to feel like they are a part of the same BC community as non-transfers. French also admitted that the housing of transfers can be a challenge for some students. She stresses to students that they must come with their eyes wide open and accept that although a transfer may not get the same housing opportunities that incoming freshmen receive, in the grand scheme of college, this issue is not one that should dictate the entire experience. Despite these housing difficulties, Armstrong says she has still been able to meet people through different clubs and organizations. She is a member of the BC Irish Dance team, a member of the Irish Society, and is a part of a Relay for Life team. When Kat Mussalli, CSOM ’14, who transferred from a university about 25 minutes outside of Philadelphia, first considered transferring to BC last year, BC was the first and only school that came to her mind. Like Armstrong, Mussalli was attracted to BC’s proximity to Boston as well as the strong academics and school spirit of BC students. Mussalli says, “[In] particular comparison to my experience at a different college, I really appreciated BC’s more diverse sampling of students and the overall ambitious yet fun atmosphere of its student body.” Mussalli has also found her niche at BC by becoming heavily involved in extracurricular activities, like Project Sunshine, College Bound Mentoring, Women in Business, the Marketing Academy, and Word of Mouth. Although these transfers originally came from different institutions and are involved in different things, they all agree that BC was ultimately the right choice for them. Both of the aforementioned candidates state that they are now at the school that they imagined themselves at all along. Mussalli summarizes her fellow candidates feelings, saying, “I’m so happy to finally be an Eagle!” n

It may be a good idea to put the hammer down on ‘Super Smash Bros’

Ryan McGuill

I hear it when I’m walking to class. I see it when I close my eyes. I’m constantly confronted by it whenever I walk into my common room. It’s shaping my reputation and keeping me awake at night. It has claimed the lives of my roommates, and its destructive noose is tightening around my neck, too. It has sent my life into an unavoidable downward spiral. Of course, I’m talking about Super Smash Bros. You thought I was about to go off on an “Intervention”-esque rant about some nasty drug habit that has developed in my room, didn’t you? Well, Super Smash Bros might not qualify as an illegal narcotic, but its addictive tendencies can turn its most avid opponent into a disciple of the game’s holy deity, the N64. Laugh at me all you want and call me a nerd, but I assure you that I’m (occasionally) good at sports, which would discredit any ideas that I’m inherently a video-game-worshipping slob. So before you judge me, allow me to first present to you this harrowing tale of destruction and demise in the lives of a few well-behaved schoolboys. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t explain the basic gist of Super Smash Bros to those lucky ones who have never been exposed to it. The game is played on the Nintendo 64, a circa-1997 square black console that can survive boot stomps, drops from average-sized cliffs, and nuclear Armageddon. With the state of modern video games being dictated by live play and motion-activated sensors, there’s a certain retro vibe that the N64 gives off. The cords to the controllers get ridiculously tangled, and when the game doesn’t work, you blow into its cartridge like a harmonica and hope that you’ve cleared out any dust or Dunkaroos collecting inside. (Obviously the rationality of your nine-year-old self carries over into the present day.) But there’s also a nostalgic feeling that comes from your memories of opening up that rectangular box on Christmas morning and flipping thehell out when you saw the N64, and then proceeding to play it in your pajamas for a week straight. Oh, God. I sound like I’m talking about some secret, forsaken love right now. I’m more pathetic than I feared. And I haven’t even

started talking about the actual game. Super Smash Bros is a good old, free-for-all battle of characters straight out of your nerdiest nightmare. You choose to play as strange little creatures that range from a laser toting fox to a boy scout who attacks people with a yo-yo (which is essentially what childhood boils down to for most people, right?). Up to four people can play at a time, and the basic aim of the game is to

mutated into a time-eating, grade-stomping, life-disregarding monster. When I return from a late night at the library, yearning for nothing but sleep, I’m greeted by my roommates clicking feverishly on their grey controllers. I’m usually coerced into playing a game by their constant chiding, but our 60-inch TV and huge beanbag chairs definitely factor into the decision. I always tell myself that I’ll just play one game as the time

damage your opponents until they lose one out of their predetermined number of lives. Damage can be inflicted by personal attacks or through the use of items that sporadically appear throughout the course of the game. The last man standing is the worthy victor. Sure, the game sounds simple enough, harmless even, but its misuse can lead to dire consequences. Or should I say, “abuse?” The game started off as an innocent competition between friends but has since

management warning alarm begins to sound off in my imagination, but just like Lays potato chips, you can never just have one. Games typically end in a tizzy of tossed controllers and the occasional wrestling match (or pulled hamstring, in my case), but there’s always an unacknowledged agreement to play another game until we realize that it’s 3 a.m. and “wow, I actually have a ton of work to do, I’m screwed.” The embodiment of our “Smash” abuse comes

from the recent emergence of the “Smash Ladder.” The “Smash Ladder” is a whiteboard taped onto our wall that displays our version of the AP Top 10 of the game. If you want to move up on the ladder, you have to challenge the person directly in front of you to a one-on-one battle, and you’re only allowed to do so once a day. Oh, and “Vamos a la playa” needs to be blasting from our speakers for the game to count. I wish I were making this up, I really do, but apparently no one else on this campus is cool enough (read: wastes enough of their precious time) to devise a BCS system for a 15-year-old Nintendo 64 game. Although I was once a verifiable competitor in the realm of “Smash,” I’ve recently dropped quite a few spots on the ladder. I’m not the gamer that I used to be. I get too heated after losing and I end up verbally harassing my roommates. I tried to compensate for my shortcomings by playing whenever I got the opportunity. I skipped full days of class and refused to go out on the weekends. That’s when I hit rock bottom. The amount of respect for me in the Brighton/Chestnut Hill area is staggeringly low right now. I decided to go cold turkey for a little while, and fortunately, I’ve been successful. Most importantly, I’d like to use this column to announce my permanent hiatus from the game of Super Smash Bros. I’m done with it. No more pain, no more sorrow. Now more than ever, I need to surround myself with more productive and positive activities, like gardening and Zumba. If you run into me on campus, try not to mention any trigger words. Those words can range from “I was so smashed last night” to “Dude, check out my Super Mario moustache, I’ve been growing it for three weeks.” Just don’t, if you know what’s good for you. OK, so I’m slightly exaggerating, but interpret this column as a way to break some of the addictive habits of your roommates. I probably won’t be successful in doing so, but if any of you have more will power and motivation than I do, which is probably the vast majority of people in this world, then you’ll do great!

Ryan McGuill is a staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at features@ bcheights.com

The life of a student Realtor combines classrooms with bedrooms By Bridget Norris For The Heights

It’s a typical weekday at Boston College. You wake up at an unfortunate morning hour, Facebook-creep your way through two lectures, consume 1,200 calories in one Hillside sandwich, maybe even hit the gym if you’re feeling ambitious. The best part of your day? Unwinding on the couch while you watch the latest episode of Modern Family. But wait, your phone is ringing. It’s that aggressive sophomore girl attempting to lock down her favorite off-campus house on Gerald Street for next year, even though it’s only Sept. 7. You have already had the longest day since finals’ week last semester, but you get up and get ready to show the girl some houses because you are a student real estate agent. So why would you do this to yourself? Why take on another responsibility? How could you possibly juggle an extra extra-curricular? Greg Karelitz, current employee of RP Boston and A&S ’13, and Mike Giannone, current employee of Great Places Realty and BC ’11, decided to do just that. The initial inspiration to get involved with real estate varies from case to case. Karelitz saw it as an opportunity to capitalize on when his parents were in the market for a house on Cape Cod, whereas Giannone simply wanted a high-paying job as an 18-year-old. While their reasons for getting into the real estate game were different, the steps they had to take to get there were the same. It’s similar to when awkward 16-year-olds enroll in driver’s ed to fail, fail, fail, then finally pass the permit test, and eventually ace the road test: Getting a real estate license is similar to that. Aspiring agents sign up and pay a fee to take hours of real estate classes, which are offered at a variety of locations across the country. After completing the course, students are required to pass a two-part exam, which varies from state to state. The questions focus on state and federal laws about buying, selling, and leasing properties. “The vast majority of people fail the first time they take the test, but the good thing is that if you pass one section and fail the other, you only need to take the section that you failed over again,” Giannone says. So, when a student passes both portions of the state’s exam, he or she is officially a licensed agent in that state. Not bad, right? Though it isn’t necessary to find an agency to work out of, it is the best way to market oneself to the BC campus. Karelitz’s brokerage hires only BC students to show houses only in the off-campus area because they are

familiar with the location and the students they work with. His marketing go-to is word of mouth, especially with his sophomore friends. This might not seem too flashy, but think about it -would you ever buy a Homecoming dress without your best friend’s opinion? No chance. So when your friend who found her dream house suggests a Realtor to you, would you get jealous and demand his name and number immediately? Of course. Giannone’s agency takes even bigger steps to rope in the students. It is strategically placed next to City Convenience, El Pelon Taqueria, and Campus Tan, ensuring that 99 percent of the sophomore class will have walked by their office by the time they’re on their off-campus housing grind. They also have an eye-catching red and yellow Facebook ad that mystically finds its way to all BC students’ pages. These tactics efficiently familiarize BC students with Great Places. But how do these motivated individuals balance this career with being a student at BC? It all depends on how much time students are willing to put in and how many clients they have. Karelitz, who is still new to the game, works flexible hours with his several clients. He spends most of his time researching the BC properties on his agency’s database so he is ready for whatever outrageous expectations his customers have for their off-campus housing selection. Giannone, who has been showing houses for years, explains that when he has 10 clients at once, it gets overwhelming. “In September and October it was very hard,” he says. “I would spend many nights at the office until midnight with clients, talking to parents, doing paperwork, etc.” Although it is a flexible career, it can still do some damage on one’s social life. Agencies are required to put the clients first, so if the only time they can look at houses is 10 p.m. on a Thursday, the Realtor has to sacrifice a night at Cantab. So half of a student Realtor’s free time that he could use for writing that Europe in the World paper or hitting up the bars is taken up by prowling the side streets of Comm. Ave with sophomores? Yes, this may seem absurd, but the pay off is worth it. Usually, the first month’s rent of a house is paid directly to the agency it was leased from. Half of that rent usually goes into the Realtor’s pocket. So for example, if one month’s rent is $8,000, that means the realtor walked away with $4,000. On one house. That’s twice as much as your average summer camp counselor salary, minus the screaming toddlers and long hours in the sun. Even after college, this career is still relevant. The unique part about this job is that it’s not a claustrophobic-cubicle, meetings

Photo Courtesy of Flickr.com

Cleveland Circle is home to a number of real estate properties for BC students.

every Friday, nine-to-five job. It’s less about sitting at a desk and more about getting out there and showing houses. Karelitz has plans to remain in the real estate industry after graduation as a side job. Giannone is a full-time employee with EMC, yet continues to work for Great Places. Though real estate may seem like an easy job to get into, your Average Joe might not have what it takes. The balancing act alone requires an organized, determined person. The career itself calls for someone who is “personable, honest, and willing to doing the research,” according to Karelitz. This is a career that requires you to always know the answer and always have what the client is looking for. Anyone who has experienced the off-campus house hunt knows that your house is as important to you as your first-born child, so it’s clutch to trust your Realtor. “Real estate is a ruthless business, so you have to always be on your toes and protect your clientele,” Giannone says. n

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

campus chronicles

Discovering inspiration in the madness Alexandra Schaeffer For the third night in a row last week I went to bed without a roommate. In fact, I don’t think anyone in my eightman suite has seen her in at least 72 hours. For some friends this might be cause for concern, but it wasn’t entirely uncharacteristic of this particular roommate. Yet, I thought I had cured her of this bat-like schedule last year after we attended a sleep deprivation conference that outlined the negative health effects (of which there are many) of lack of sleep. This particular week however, organic chemistry had won, and it had taken my roommate back to the dark side. She was spending every waking hour, which in her case meant every hour, with her head slammed in a five-pound textbook denser than lead. She finally returned after days of preparing for, and eventually taking the Orgo midterm, falling into bed, and staying there for the next two days straight. Though she swears this was a one-time occurrence and that she will go back to a more human-like circadian rhythm now, I think it is safe to say that I am not the only person who has lost a roommate to the library these past couple weeks. Midterm season dawned upon us about two weeks ago, and frankly once it arrives it feels like it consumes the remainder of the semester. Classes have been heard to have their final midterm a mere week or two before the final exam. It can sometimes feel cruel the way midterms casually approach the unassuming Boston College student. The first month of school we are lulled into a state of confidence, somewhat amazed at our seeming ability to master the work we have been assigned. Students have time to put effort into their outfits, go out to see movies, and take classes at the Plex they never knew existed. We marvel at the opportunities available to us upon coming back to school. “Why didn’t I spend every Saturday walking around Boston last year?” students ask themselves. The answer to these questions, and the halt to the leisurely lifestyle, arrives about six weeks into the semester. All of a sudden that calendar that I had all that time to set up earlier in the semester is looking a little more crowded, with the word “midterm” scattered in about five different places (all a little too close to each other for my comfort), and “research paper due” written down on about three more days. A slight panic seeps in, as I realize I haven’t been inundated with this much work in at least five or six months. I’m not quite sure how it’s all going to get done, and the enormity of the studying, the researching, and the writing seems insurmountable. The scary thing is, if I look a little bit further along the calendar, it doesn’t look any less messy. It’s one of those situations when once the floodgates open there is no end to the rush. Students have different approaches to handling the stress of midterms. Some people, like my roommate, just disappear into the depths of Bapst, not to return until the whole storm has blown over. Other people hole themselves up in their rooms and emerge only to go to class. There are also the students that start planning far in advance for everything, making everyone around them feel guilty in the process, and then breeze through the week with barely a yawn. Though I personally am not one who outwardly freaks out when midterms arrive (being an English major and having minimal midterms may contribute to this), I do have my moments when I freak out about my workload and put myself into overdrive. These momentary bursts of inspiration are particularly useful for writing papers, and help me get everything I need done for the week. I’ve found that Saturdays devoted to churning out work, and not spent enjoying the city of Boston, help minimize my stress. Due to Sunday’s presence there is less pressure on getting everything finished that day, but even doing a little bit helps ease the load for the rest of the week. Regardless, no matter how you handle it, this time of year sneaks up on all of us and reminds us why school is associated with work. In fact, it was just as I checked the last thing off my planner Thursday night and sat back to relax, thinking I had finished all of my work for the week that I got an e-mail from my editor reminding me that I had my column due the next day. Though I love writing, I usually like to have a couple of days to think about my topic. It was under this stress that I realized the answer was right in front of me.

Alexandra Schaeffer is a staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at features@bcheights.com

Stay classy or don’t stay classy, please just stick with one Kneeland encourages some BC students to develop self-awareness Brendan Kneeland As I prepare my exit from The Heights and from Boston College, I guess I’ve developed something you might call “wisdom” about certain things. Or at least, I’ve done more than my fair share of stupid crap and can tell you a bit about it before I leave. A little bit of both, I suppose. More of the stupid stuff, maybe. Alright, definitely more of the stupid. Anyway, being on your way out gives you an interesting perspective on BC life and people. When you’re so close to leaving this all behind, you start to take stock of what is actually important. Or at least you can tell the difference when something isn’t. At this point I feel like Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes, ranting about the minutiae of BC and all the things that irritate me about life and people. The word “classy” is a word that is overused on our campus. A drunk girl stumbles awkwardly off the Comm. Ave bus in her four-inch heels, a guy in a threepiece suit belligerently leaves a party – and both tell everyone to, “Keep it classy, folks.” But what does that mean? Do we even know anymore? Did we ever? Now I think we all know what classy isn’t. We’ve all seen (or been) sloppy drunks walking around campus at all hours of the night, singing “Don’t Stop Believin’” and puking into the nearest bush. We’ve all seen (or been) that kid who shows up 30 minutes late to a 50-minute class, sporting some pajamas from the “homeless chic” collection, and pretending nothing is out of the ordinary. More than a few people still feel the need to yell, “Eagles first down … b—” when our football team is little more than a bad joke. I’ll dwell on the football thing for a

minute, just because I think it is something that is at the heart of our sometimes-classless student body. (Plus, I really can’t judge people who show up to class in pajamas … sweatpants are comfortable). But a lot of the time we just don’t think about what we’re doing. If you look at the football team for what it is, you would just stand there, do the chants, hang your head after our inevitable loss, and leave. Instead, most of our drunk underclassmen will go through the motion of saying, “First down … b—” as if they are not even seeing the football game right before their eyes. At

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a school sponsored by Vineyard Vines, brought to you by Brooks Brothers, the night-and-day change between “classy” students and drunken idiots I see every week just seems strange. Especially strange is seeing people I know to be complete animals get in a suit and head to an interview at a prestigious corporation that Daddy set up for them. If you’re wondering what the point of this column is, my apologies. I haven’t been really clear about it until now, and honestly I wasn’t sure where I was going until I got to this point. But here it is. My main issue here is that people try to project the appearance of “classiness” only long enough to get that interview or do that presentation, and then they immediately fall back into some slovenly, pseudo-frat state of stupid that they are only in because they think, “That’s how you’re supposed to act when you’re in college.” Pick a side, folks. Be a bit more honest with yourselves. You’re either “classy” (whatever that means) or you’re not, but be what you are. Just because you can dress in a suit doesn’t make you a businessperson, and putting on some salmon-colored shorts and shot-gunning a Natty Light doesn’t make you some sort of cool frat boy. I’m not a fan of blanket statements, but as far as I’m concerned, while we’re here at BC, we’re all upper-middle class kids who have little to no real concept of how the world works. To me, “classy” means being self-aware. Have the selfawareness to know when you’re being an idiot. Have the common courtesy to not scream on the Comm Ave bus or pee on my building. That is all.

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Brendan Kneeland is a staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at features@bcheights.com

professor profile

Williams reinforces teaching with groundbreaking research By Jennifer Lavoie For The Heights

Many students at Boston College would argue that college is about challenges. Upon their arrival, freshmen are immediately encouraged by BC’s most recognizable slogan, to “Set the world aflame.” Sure, St. Ignatius’ concept seems simple at first, but once you are two or three years into your education, the phrase often acquires more meaning and becomes a bit overwhelming. Where do I go from here? What are my passions? These questions begin to consume our everyday lives. Often, our peers seem to be just as uncertain as we are. As a result, it is almost natural we find ourselves gravitating toward those who do know best. Many forget that within a small walk from us, professors are currently in the process of dealing with their own challenges. One in particular, Kenneth Williams, a professor in the biology department, has been setting an example for students ever since his arrival at BC four years ago. Williams, who is currently being recognized for his work with HIV, has been using his knowledge of and love for the sciences to encourage students to conquer their own challenges and immerse themselves in whatever they find interesting. Williams comes from a highly educated background, having received undergraduate degrees in biology, psychology, and chemistry – an interesting combination as he “likes the intersection of all of these.” He says that he gravitated toward good teachers, who encouraged him to take classes about Buddhism, Japanese culture, logic, and of course, chemistry. Williams continued his education by doing his Ph.D. work at McGill Montreal Neurological Institute, which historically was a world leader in brain functioning and imaging. He studied immunology in the brain in disease, and was able to meet many leaders in the field. “I remember going to the library and realizing there were journals that had real data, about real things, and then also realizing about half of the articles were fully correct,” he says

in an e-mail. Realizations like this inspired Williams to fully immerse himself in his post doctorial training at Dartmouth Medical School. “Science evolves and is almost always limited by technology of the labs, and large egos of people, telling their stories, but they need to evolve,” he says. “Immunology and brain sciences change all of the time.” His desire to help continuously evolve the world of science resulted in him working at Harvard Medical School, and as of four years ago, bringing his knowledge to the students of BC. Williams, who currently teaches a course on the cell biology and the nervous system, describes his teaching style as “very much about me talking, and giving students new language of brain cells, immunology, and pathology, so when the course is over they are experts with new language.” However, he says that he doesn’t have a teaching philosophy that he abides by. “I come from a medical school background, and have experience giving talks on research in my field,” he says. “In the classroom, I emphasize form and function relationships of cells in the brains, moving past dogma, and current leading edge research that moves the field forward.” His interest lies in the history of ideas in the field and the people who made the discoveries. His recent buzz worthy discovery of a certain molecule that serves as a marker for HIV activity, had its beginnings when Williams was smoking a cigar in his garage and reading “what people thought was important.” He says that at the time, everyone was looking at LPS from bacteria in plasma that activated immune cells and drove disease. However, the data didn’t hold despite papers in nature. “We looked at a molecule that is shed from cells when stimulated by LPS, and found it always correlated with disease, even with patients on effective anti-HIV therapy,” he says. “So, maybe LPS had an important effect, but LPS itself, measured in plasma was not reliable.” Williams and his team were then able to find

the molecule stimulated by LPS, and then were able to locate it in HIV, cardiac disease, and brain disease, all with HIV infection. And now there is a question that arises from this recent discovery: What does this molecule do? Williams and his team say their best assumption is that it protects the immune system from “going out of control.” Moving forward, the professor is working on two projects associated with his HIV marker discovery. Fifty percent of HIV-infected patients who are on anti-HIV therapy have cardiac inflammation and disease, which is not detected by traditional markers. William’s marker, sCD163, does detect these patients. Further, the team has found that the marker in plasma is a biomarker of HIV-infected patients who have neurological disease due to the virus, even though their anti retroviral therapy makes virus levels in plasma undetectable. Williams plans to work on more studies aiming to define the anti-inflammatory role of this marker in innate immunity. In the midst of his discoveries and studies, Williams still makes sure he focuses on his teaching. He is currently developing a new course on infection and immunity, which will discuss new approaches to immunology and disease, again stressing current findings in the field. He emphasizes that he likes big ideas. “I appreciate the aesthetic of science, as an artist, images produced,” he says. “Students here are used to memorizing, but not always appreciating the big idea.” He stresses that students should spend more time reading current literature and discussing with less time spent memorizing. At the end of the day, Williams has a true love and appreciation for his work, but also for BC. “I love very much that students have a varied background,” he says. “They are smart, and appreciate new ideas and thoughts. We all have a brain, and therefore seem interested in knowing about it.” His dedication is shown through his research projects and his ability to inspire students. n

he said, she said I really want to take this girl on a date, but it seems that people don’t really go on dates, and I don’t want it to seem weird. Assuming she’d go, what are some suggestions for fun first dates? - resurrector of chivalry

Although it’s true that dating isn’t a huge part of the Boston College social scene, I think it says a lot about you that you’re opting to ask someone out before having some other kind of “encounter.” So, bonus points for having some originality, even though it’s kind of embarrassing that going on a date with someone is less common than just hooking up for a while. I think the biggest key for a first date is to Alex get out of the “BC Bubble,” which basically T rautwig just means the Cleveland Circle area. I enjoy Fin’s as much as the next person, but I think it makes more of an impact if you go someplace more unique. Take advantage of the city of Boston; it’s something that I think is often overlooked. Plus, the T ride isn’t bad, especially for a date, where it can be a good time to talk and get to know the person you’re with. I think heading to the MFA would be a strong first date. You can spend as much or as little time you want there and almost anyone can appreciate fine art. Additionally, it’s easy to talk and get to know one another further. Finish it up with lunch or dinner- I would advocate for dinner - anywhere close by. There are a ton of places but do at least a little research so it doesn’t look like you were completely unprepared. After that, your only concern should be what you’re going to do for your second date.

Oh my goodness! I think it’s wonderful that you want to take a girl on a date. Please spread the word to more BC boys and tell them to do the same. Going on a date would not be weird. Frankly, I think it’s a little strange that there is not more dating on this college campus. As my counterpart said, you should definitely take advantage of BC’s proximity to Boston. There are so many fun and adventurous activities to do in the Madeline city, while getting to know someone. We are Demoulas fortunate that Boston is so beautiful during the fall and that it offers so much in terms of things to do. I would take your date to the Charles River and stroll along the pathway. You can even rent bikes if you’re feeling a little more ambitious. Boston has events almost every weekend. For example, this past weekend was the Head of the Charles Regatta, which is always exciting. After spending some time exploring the city, I would have lunch or dinner in the North End for an authentic Italian meal. The vibrant atmosphere of this section of the city will take the pressure off the date, and help you to have an enjoyable time. In the end, it’s not as important what you do as long as you are together having fun. If it’s not love at first sight, don’t get discouraged - at least you spent a day off campus doing something new.

Alex Trautwig is an editor for The Heights. He can be reached at features@bcheights.com

Madeline Demoulas is a senior staff writer for The Heights. She can be reached at features@bcheights.edu.

The Heights

Monday, October 24, 2011

Over the red tape and through SPO to club status student groups go By Juliette San Fillipo Heights Staff

If you’ve ever attended one of the Student Involvement Day fairs on Boston College’s campus in the fall, you can’t deny that it is overwhelming. For one day a semester, Linden Lane (as a replacement for the Dustbowl) parades table after table of clubs and other student groups so that other students may learn more about how to get involved. There are multitudes of clubs, sports teams, and other organizations on campus that can call themselves a part of BC, but the process of becoming officially recognized by the school as a Registered Student Organization (RSO) is more exacting than the numbers lead on. “When you are at the involvement fair, if you don’t see what you’re looking for, we say, ‘Stop by the office, and we can create it,’” says Karl Bell, assistant director in the Student Programs Office (SPO). “We really approach this in a way where we say we want to create a vibrant Heights community. Students who are new here, or have been here three years, [who

want to start their own organization] should absolutely do so. But of course, then there is the challenge of doing so,” Bell says. The desire to establish a new club at BC could stem from a number of places; for example, there is the possibility that one like it does not exist on campus already, or maybe a student has an obscure hobby that has or can garner a following on campus, from anything such as karate to Ukrainian culture. Sometimes, students are passionate about a certain issue and wish to create more of a presence on campus on behalf of that passion. One example of this is R.E.A.C.T., Rallying Efforts Against Contemporary Trafficking, an official BC club began by former president Hannah Johnson, BC ’09, to raise awareness about human trafficking and how it is one of the most egregious social justice problems in contemporary times. “The beginnings of R.E.A.C.T. can be contributed to Lisbee Mumford, class of 2009,” Johnson says, in an e-mail. “She had worked with victims of human trafficking during a semester abroad in Thailand and at

Photo Courtesy of www.bc.edu/mybc

Registered student organizations each have their own page on the SPO’s primary website.

the real world

an internship in New Jersey. With these two experiences, she returned to BC passionate and eager to start a movement of interest and action at BC.” Johnson says R.E.A.C.T. became an official club during the fall of 2009, after seeking approval from and working with BC’s SPO for around two years. The former president claims becoming an official club became somewhat necessary as the number of participants grew on campus and they needed the support, recourses, facilities, and legitimacy that comes with being an RSO. “During the academic year of 2008-2009, R.E.A.C.T. was functioning as an interest group under the official student group Americans for Informed Democracy (A.I.D.),” Johnson says. “Without the official title, a group is not able to request rooms or receive University funding in the form of a budget. The lack of both of these things made it difficult to operate on the scale we were growing towards.” If a student seeks to start their own club on campus, the SPO and its website, www. bc.edu/mybc, are the places to go. “We encourage folks to visit myBC. It’s where students go to find out all things BC; where organizations go to present their events to the community; where they go to request the registration of a new organization at BC, etc.” Bell says. Right on the webpage is a green button students can click that says “Register New Organization” in order to take that one step to start making their club happen. “From there, we review the initial submission in our office. And then we share that info with what we call the Committee for New RSOs, which is a University-wide committee of [members from] Campus Ministry, faculty from departments throughout, and students,” Bell says. The Committee for New RSOs looks at the requests the SPO receives, makes recommendations to the office around those organizations that should be registered, or those that should talk to existing organizations to combine their efforts. In order to request that a new organization be recognized by the SPO, a student must first identify a primary contact and provide a proposal that details the name, mission, vision,

and nature of the proposed organization. The proposal must also include a statement that addresses how the new organization will support and enhance student life at Boston College, as well as its mission. After this, the proposed club’s fate is in the hands of the Committee for New RSOs and the SPO who continuously go over the proposals to deem which organizations may make the cut. “Some organizations for example, like the Outdoor Club, given the nature of the activity proposed, set the bar in theory much higher as a proposal, because they require a lot of meetings,” Bell explains. “The same is true with an organization that is religious. For those organizations, there is a separate process, like there is for campus recreation, club sports before we register. Once [students] have met the process in those respective areas, they come to us for final approval. We’re ultimately responsible for all organizations [on campus],” Bell says. In terms of the club R.E.A.C.T., Johnson agrees that the process of becoming an official RSO meant a lot of time and tedium. “We started the working with SPO at the beginning of the spring semester in 2009 and didn’t get approval until the end of the year. We did not know very much about what it required to be a club, the organization, the number of officers, all the pieces that would need to make there way into a constitution which did not help the process go faster. It seemed for better or for worst that we ran into quite a bit of bureaucracy that slowed things down as well,” Johnson says. The SPO harbors specific criteria that an organization must fulfill in order to be recognized officially by the University, which is why it is not a simple task beginning one’s club on campus. Some major exclusions to the RSO criteria are commercial/for-profit groups or organizations with discriminatory practices or admission criteria. “We don’t register fraternities or sororities. Those are not open to all BC students; we don’t do secret societies. Nor do we register organizations that advocate positions that are contrary to the University, or that advance positions in opposition to the University. For example, we wouldn’t sanction a sexual health club,” Bell explains.

Besides the criteria that specifically ban certain organizations on campus, the SPO also lays down guidelines of behavior and conduct for RSOs in order to maintain that status. According to the SPO, RSOs must have at least 10 members, have a faculty/staff advisor, reregister annually, meet the standards of conduct in set forth in the Student Guide, and not duplicate any registered organization on campus – to name a few. Although it may seem difficult to become an RSO at BC, and potentially to maintain that title from year to year, the benefits of being an official club on campus are considerable. “There are tons,” Bell says. “There are benefits of not being registered, too, like not having to find a faculty advisor or reregister each year. But I think the [best] benefits are that you are eligible to receive funding from the University in the form of activity fees, you are eligible to request a space for events at BC, you may advertise your events on campus, you may recruit at the [Student Involvement] fair. You have support from this office, you have access to leadership seminars that are special to RSOs, you have use of the University name and webspace, all that stuff.” Besides the physical benefits that come with being officially recognized by the school, like space and funding, Johnson also recalls that being tied to a legitimate institution also gave her club a foothold. “Legitimacy was another big benefit that became obvious after becoming official,” she says. “The legitimacy that comes with formal recognition from BC was helpful when interacting with these other organizations and in trying to form relationships with new organizations. Almost any organization working with this issue is generally excited to hear about student interest, but we became somewhat more reputable when we were suddenly attached to an institution.” Despite the formidable challenge of finally becoming an RSO, it seems that once this aim is achieved, members enjoy countless boons denied other groups not affiliated with the campus – and that can only serve to enhance the goals of the students who started it and give them greater function within the community, which is what being involved is all about. n

A whole lot of nothing certainly is something Karl Lockhart Pretend that there were 15 lines of blank space following the headline. That would catch your eye immediately, right? Something’s missing. Somebody made a mistake. That’s not supposed to be there. It’s interesting how nothing means something. While this is an extreme example, there are many places where an absence is as important as having something there. For example, we know that the word dog means just one four-legged canine. How? The absence of the s on the end. In the same way, it was hard for me to initially define peace except for “the absence of war.” I thought of peace as the end to struggles that are plaguing the world right now. On every continent, wars are continuing, seemingly without end. Kenya’s invasion of Al-Shabaab controlled Somali territory. There are popular uprisings in nearly every Middle Eastern and North African country. The insurrections that continue to occur in Iraq

and Afghanistan. Peace also encompasses our relationship with nature, as weather disturbances become more the norm than the exception. Last spring’s tsunami and earthquake in Japan is still a prescient force that remains indelible from the daily lives of many Japanese. The famine and drought in the horn of Africa have no doubt killed millions due to malnutrition, starvation, or lack of clean water. Flooding in Southeast Asia is disrupting the lives of thousands more. We must continue to consider how the choices we make regarding what we buy, how much energy we use, and where that energy comes from, effect the peace of others and our natural world. But as I thought about it more, I came to realize that peace encompasses much more. The dictionary definition is: “freedom from disturbance; quiet and tranquility.” Peace is not just something to be achieved at a national level. It, like other virtues, is also a personal quality, an ideal that we can strive to possess. My brother likes to quote Leo Tolstoy when he encounters people who think they have the solution to a global crisis. “Everyone thinks of

changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” How true it is that we try to solve others’ problems before we begin to examine our own failings and shortcomings. I am the most guilty of this. I’m trying to examine virtues that I barely possess, if at all, which is innately prideful and egoistic. I don’t know how to achieve the “peace in our day” that we pray for every time the mass is said. I do know that I have a long way to go before I become a tranquil person, able to remain steadfast and calm in every situation, no matter how stressful. I don’t think that I can achieve this calmness through my own power. I don’t feel it inside myself. I can only step forward in the manner of St. Francis. Hopefully, we at Boston College can begin to live in the manner of these powerful words.

Karl Lockhart is a staff columnist for The Heights. He can be reached at features@bcheights. com

Parasocial interaction and our obsession with the rich and famous Lauren Ruvo The other day I was reading a magazine when I stumbled upon a picture of Beyonce’s evergrowing baby bump, and immediately I felt a surge of excitement for her. I sat there thinking how lucky that baby will be to have such great parents. After thinking for a little while longer about the great relationship that Beyonce and Jay-Z have, I had to remind myself that I do not actually know these people. In fact, for a second I began to think that maybe I was crazy to be acting as if I knew them. But then, I quickly remembered all the times when my friends and I made similar comments about celebrities or when we heard other people talking about the latest Hollywood gossip. Why is our culture so obsessed with people

we have absolutely no attachment to? Why do we constantly try to measure up to people who, for a living, have to look as close to perfect as possible? The answer for this stems from the term “parasocial interaction.” The term was coined to describe the imaginary closeness that audiences feel when watching fictional shows. This term can easily be used to describe the relationship that people feel toward celebrities. However, it does not explain why we feel this attachment. Although parasocial interaction was originally used to describe the imaginary relationship that people felt with characters on television, it is safe to say that people have been feeling an attachment to people belonging to higher classes for hundreds of years. When we look at the older kings and queens in Great Britain, we see a ton of evidence that shows how members of

lower classes looked up to and tried to emulate royalty. It’s the same story with celebrities. We see these people who live in gorgeous mansions, have perfect bodies, and equally perfect lives, and we want to know how we can achieve this. So, we continue to buy the magazines in hopes of learning their secrets to success, regardless of whether the articles are accurate. The reverse is also true. We read the articles about the break-ups and the scandals with an equal amount of intrigue because we like seeing these images of perfection fail. We tend to be drawn to articles that say, “Stars, they’re just like us,” and we devour the worst dressed list or Fashion Police on E!. Does this really make us feel better about ourselves? Seeing and reading about people we do not know succeed or fail seems likes a

strange way to measure our self-worth, yet it is not a new phenomenon. We enjoy the failure as much as the success because for a split second we do not feel as terrible about our own seemingly boring lives (and by boring I mean that we are not getting invited to the Oscars’ after party, let alone the Oscars). This lifestyle of constantly comparing ourselves to people whose job it is to be perfect can easily be seen as unhealthy. However, so long as we are able to separate reality from the tabloids, striving to obtain at least half of their success may just be the push that people need to keep them going throughout the day.

Lauren Ruvo is a staff columnist for The Heights. She can be reached at features@ bcheights.com